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THE 



ABOMINATIONS 



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Modern Society. 



» y\>*Tw-#co 



BY 



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REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, 

A « 

AUTHOR OF " CRUMBS SWEPT UP." 







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NEW YORK: 
ADAMS, VICTOR & CO., 

98 WILLIAM STREET. 
1872. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

ADAMS, VICTOR & CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Waslungtou. 



PREFACE. 



This is a buoy swung over the rocks. If it shall 
keep ship, bark, fore-and-aft schooner, or hermaphro- 
dite brig from driving on a lee shore, " all's well." 

The book is not more for young men than old. 
The Calabria was wrecked " the last day out." 

Nor is the book more for men than women. The 
best being that God ever made is a good woman, and 
the worst that the devil ever made is a bad one. If 
anything herein shall be a warning either to man or 
woman, I will be glad that the manuscript was caught 
up between the sharp teeth of the type. 

T. D. W. T. 

Brooklyn, January ist, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



FAG* 

The Curtain Lifted 9 

Winter Nights 25 

The Power of Clothes 38 

After Midnight 59 

The Indiscriminate Dance 79 

The Massacre by Needle and Sewing-Machine 94 

Pictures in the Stock Gallery 114 

Leprous Newspapers 137 

The Fatal Ten-Strike 154 

Some of the Club-Houses 186 

Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 201 

House of Blackness of Darkness 226 

The Gun that Kicks over the Man who Shoots it off 241 

Lies : White and Black 262 

The Good Time Coming. 276 



1 



THE ABOMINATIONS. 



THE CURTAIN LIFTED. 

Pride of city is natural to men, in all times, 
if they live or have lived in a metropolis noted 
for dignity or prowess. Csesar boasted of his 
native Rome ; Lycurgus of Sparta ; Virgil of 
Andes; Demosthenes of Athens; Archimedes of 
Syracuse ; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspect 
a man of base-heartedness who carried about 
with him no feeling of complacency in regard to 
the place of his residence ; who gloried not in its 
arts, or arms, or behavior ; who looked with no 
exultation upon its evidences of prosperity, its 
artistic embellishments, and its scientific at- 
tainments. 

I have noticed that men never like a place 
where they have not behaved well. Swart- 
hout did not like New York ; nor Dr. Webster, 



io The Abominations. 

Boston. Men who have free rides in prison- 
vans never like the city that furnishes the 
vehicle. 

When I see in history Argos, Rhodes, Smyr- 
na, Chios, Colophon, and several other cities 
claiming Homer, I conclude that Homer be- 
haved well. 

Let us not war against this pride of city, 
nor expect to build up ourselves by pulling 
others down. Let Boston have its Common , 
its Faneuil Hall, its Coliseum, and its Atlantic 
Monthly. Let Philadelphia talk about its Mint> 
and Independence Hall, and Girard College. 
When I find a man living in either of those 
places, who has nothing to say in favor of 
them, I feel like asking him, " What mean 
thing did you do, that you do not like your 
native city ? " 

New York is a goodly city. It is one city 
on both sides of the river. The East River is 
only the main artery of its great throbbing life. 
After a while four or five bridges will span the 
water, and we shall be still more emphatically 
one than now. When, therefore, I say "New 
York city," I mean more than a million of peo- 



The Curtain Lifted, 1 1 

pie, including everything between Spuyten 
Duyvil Creek and Gowanus. That which tends 
to elevate a part, elevates all. That which 
blasts part, blasts all. Sin is a giant ; and he 
comes to the Hudson or Connecticut River, and 
passes it, as easily as we step across a figure in 
the carpet. The blessing of God is an angel ; 
and when it stretches out its two wings, one 
of them hovers over that, and the other over 
this. 

In infancy, the great metropolis was laid down 
by the banks of the Hudson. Its infancy was 
as feeble as that of Moses, sleeping in the bul- 
rushes by the Nile ; and like Miriam, there our 
fathers stood and watched it. The royal spirit 
of American commerce came down to the water 
to bathe ; and there she found it. She took it 
in her arms, and the child grew and waxed 
strong ; and the ships of foreign lands brought 
gold and spices to its feet ; and, stretching itself 
up into the proportions of a metropolis, it has 
looked up to the mountains, and off upon the 
sea, — one of the mightiest of the energies of 
American civilization. 

The character of the founder of a city will be 



1 2 The A bom {nations. 

seen for many years in its inhabitants. Romu- 
lus impressed his life upon Rome. The Pil- 
grims relax not their hold upon the cities of 
New England. William Penn has left Philadel- 
phia an inheritance of integrity and fair dealing ; 
and on any day in that city you may see in the 
manners, customs, and principles of its people, 
his tastes, his coat, his hat, his wife's bonnet, 
and his plain meeting-house. The Hollanders 
still wield an influence over New York. 

Grand Old New York ! What southern 
thoroughfare was ever smitten by pestilence, 
when our physicians did not throw themselves 
upon the sacrifice ! What distant land has cried 
out in the agony of famine, and our ships have 
not put out with bread-stuffs ! What street of 
Damascus, or Beyrout, or Madras that has not 
heard the step of our missionaries ! What 
struggle for national life, in which our citizens 
have not poured their blood into the trenches ! 
What gallery of exquisite art, in which our 
painters have not hung their pictures ! What 
department of literature or science to which our 
scholars have not contributed ! I need not 
speak of our^public schools, where the children 






The Curtain Lifted, 13 

of the cordwainer, and milkman, and glass- 
blower stand by the side of the flattered sons 
of millionnaires and merchant princes ; or of the 
insane asylums on all these islands, where they 
who came out cutting themselves, among the 
tombs, now sit, clothed and in their right 
mind ; or of the Magdalen asylums, where the 
lost one of the street comes to bathe the Savi- 
our's feet with her tears, and wipe them with the 
hairs of her head, — confiding in the pardon of 
Him who said — " Let him who is without sin 
cast the first stone at her." I need not speak of 
the institutions for the blind, the lame, the deaf 
and the dumb, for the incurables, for the widow, 
the orphan, and the outcast ; or of the thousand- 
armed machinery that sends streaming down 
from the reservoir the clear, bright, sparkling, 
God-given water that rushes through our aque- 
ducts, and dashes out of the hydrants, and tosses 
up in our fountains, and hisses in our steam- 
engines, and showers out the conflagration, 
and sprinkles from the baptismal font of our 
churches ; and with silver note, and golden 
sparkle, and crystalline chime, says to hundreds 
of thousands of our population, in the authentic 



14 The Abominations, 

words of Him who made it — " I WILL : BE THOU 
CLEAN ! " 

They who live in any of the American cities 
have a goodly heritage ; and it is in no depreci- 
ation of our advantages that I speak, but be- 
cause, in the very contrast with our opportu- 
nities and mission, THE ABOMINATIONS 
are tenfold more abominable. 

The sources from which I will bring the array 
of facts will be police, detective, and alms-house 
reports ; city missionaries' explorations, and the 
testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, 
who, about to take the final plunge, have stag- 
gered back just for a moment, to utter the wild 
shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail 
of their despair. 

I shall call upon you to consider the drunken- 
ness, the stock-gambling, the rampant dishon- 
esties, the club-houses so far as they are nefari- 
ous, the excess of fashion, the horrors of un- 
chastity, the bad books and unclean newspapers, 
and the whole range of sinful amusements ; and 
with the plough-share of truth turn up the whole 
field. 

If we could call up the victims themselves, 



The Curtain Lifted. 15 

they would give the most impressive story. Peo- 
ple knew not how Turner, the painter, got such 
vivid conceptions of a storm at sea, until they 
heard the story that oftentimes he had been 
lashed to the deck in the midst of the tempest, 
in order that he might study the wrath of the sea. 
Those who have themselves been tossed on 
the wave of infamous transgressions could give 
us the most vivid picture of what it is to sin and 
to die. With hand tremulous with exhausting 
disease, and hardly able to get the accursed 
bowl to his lips — put into such a hand the 
pencil, and it can sketch, as can no one else, the 
darkness, the fire, the wild terror, the headlong 
pitch, and the hell of those who have sur- 
rendered themselves to iniquity. While we 
dare only come near the edge, and, balancing 
ourselves a while, look off, and our head swims, 
and our breath catches, — those can tell the story 
best who have fallen to the depths with wilder 
dash than glacier from the top of a Swiss cliff, 
and stand, in their agony, looking up for a relief 
that comes not, and straining their eyes for a 
hope that never dawns — crying, "O God!" 
" O God ! " 



1 6 The Abominations. 

It is terrible to see a lion dashing for escape 
against the sides of his cage ; but a more aw- 
ful thing it is to behold a man, caged in bad 
habit, trying to break out, — blood on the soul, 
blood on the cage. 

Others may throw garlands upon Sin, pictur- 
ing the overhanging fruits which drop in her 
pathway, and make every step graceful as the 
dance ; but we cannot be honest without present- 
ing it as a giant, black with the soot of the forges 
where eternal chains are made, and feet rotting 
with disease, and breath foul with plagues, and 
eyes glaring with woe, and locks flowing in ser- 
pent fangs, and voice from which shall rumble 
forth the blasphemies of the damned. % 

I open to you a door, through which you 
see — what ? Pictures and fountains, and mirrors 
and flowers ? No : it is a lazar-house of disease. 
The walls drip, drip, drip with the damps of 
sepulchres. The victims, strewn over the floor, 
writhe and twist among each other in contortions 
indescribable, holding up their ulcerous wounds, 
tearing their matted hair, weeping tears of 
blood: some hooting with revengeful cry ; seme 
howling with a maniac's fear ; some chattering 



The Curtain Lifted. ij 

with idiot's stare ; some calling upon God ; some 
calling upon fiends ; wasting away ; thrusting 
each other back ; mocking each other's pains ; 
tearing open each other's ulcers ; dropping with 
the ichor of death ! The wider T'open the door, 
the ghastlier the scene. — Worse the horrors. 
More desperate recoils. Deeper curses. More 
blood. I can no longer endure the vision, and 
I shut the door, and cover my eyes, and turn 
my back, and cry, " God pity them ! " 

Some one may say, " What is the use of such an 
exposure as you propose to make ? Our families 
are all respectable." I answer, that no family, 
however elevated and exclusive, can be inde- 
pendent of the state of public morals. 

However pleasant the block of houses in 
which you dwell, the wretchedness, the tempta- 
tion, and the outrage of municipal crime will put 
its hand on your door-knob, and dash its awful 
surge against the marble of your door-steps, as 
the stormy sea drives on a rocky beach. 

That condition of morals is now being formed, 
amid which our children must walk. Do you 
tell me it is none of my business what street 
profanity shall curse my boy's ear, on his way to 



1 8 The Abominations. 

school ? Think you it is no concern of yours 
what infamous advertisements, placarded on the 
walls, or in the public newspaper, shall smite the 
vision of your innocent little ones ? Shall I be 
nervous about a stagnant pool of water, lest it 
breed malaria, and be careless when there are in 
the very heart of our city thousands of houses, 
devoted to various forms of dissipation, which 
day and night steam with miasma, and pour out 
the fiery lava of pollution, and darken the air 
with their horrors, and fill the skies with the 
smoke of their torment, that ascendeth up for- 
ever and ever? If a slaughter-house be opened 
in the midst of the town, we hasten down to the 
Mayor to have the nuisance abated. But now 
I make complaint, not to the Mayor or Com- 
mon Council, but to the masses of the people, 
who have the power to lift men up to office, 
and to cast them down, against a hundred thou- 
sand slaughter-houses in our American cities. 
In the name of our happy homes, of our refined 
circles, of our schools, of our churches, — in the 
name of all that is dear and beautiful and valu- 
able and holy, — I enter the complaint. If you 
now sit unconcerned, and leave to professed 



The Curtain Lifted. 19 

philanthropists the work, and care not who are 
in authority or what laws remain unexecuted, 
you may live to see the time when you will 
curse the day in which your children were born. 

My belief is that such an exposition of public 
immoralities will do good, by exciting pity for 
the victims and wholesale indignation against 
the abettors and perpetrators. 

Who is that man fallen against the curbstone, 
covered with bruises and beastliness ? He was 
as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from 
your nursery. His mother rocked him, prayed 
for him, fondled him, would not let the night 
air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked 
down into his loving eyes, and wondered for 
what high position he was being fitted. He 
entered life with bright hopes. The world beck- 
oned him, friends cheered him, but the archers 
shot at him; vile men set traps for him, bad 
habits hooked fast to him with their iron grap- 
ples ; his feet slipped on the way ; and there 
he lies. Who would think that that uncombed 
hair was once toyed with by a father's fingers ? 
Who would think that those bloated cheeks 
were ever kissed by a mother's lips ? Would 



20 The Abominations. 

you guess that that thick tongue once made a 
household glad with its innocent prattle ? Ut- 
ter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up. 
Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush 
the dust from that coat that once covered a 
generous heart. Show him the way to the 
home that once rejoiced at the sound of his 
footstep, and with gentle words tell his chil- 
dren to stand back as you help him through the 
hall. 

That was a kind husband once and an in- 
dulgent father. He will kneel with them no 
more as once he did at family prayers — the 
little ones with clasped hands looking up into 
the heavens with thanksgiving for their happy 
home. But now at midnight he will drive 
them from their pillows and curse them down 
the steps, and howl after them as, unclad, they 
fly down the street, in night-garments, under the 
calm starlight. 

Who slew that man ? Who blasted that 
home ? Who plunged those children into worse 
than orphanage — until the hands are blue with 
cold, and the cheeks are blanched with fear, 
and the brow is scarred with bruises, and the 



The Curtain Lifted. 21 

eyes are hollow with grief? Who made that 
life a wreck, and filled eternity with the uproar 
of a doomed spirit ? 

There are those whose regular business it 
is to work this death. They mix a cup that 
glows and flashes and foams with enchantment. 
They call it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or 
Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or Brandy, or 
Champagne ; but they tell not that in the rud- 
dy glow there is the blood of sacrifice, and in 
its flash the eye of uncoiled adders, and in the 
foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not 
knowing what a horrible mixture it is, men 
take it up and drink it down — the sacrificial 
blood, the adder's venom, the death-froth — 
and smack their lips and call it a delightful 
beverage. 

Oh ! if I had some art by which I could break 
the charm of the tempter's bowl, and with mail- 
ed hand lift out the long serpent of eternal de- 
spair, and shake out its coils, and cast it down, 
and crush it to death ! 

But the enchantment cannot thus be broken. 
It hides in the bottom of the bowl ; and not un- 
til a man is entirely fallen does the monster lift 



22 The Abominations. 

itself up, and strike with its terrific fangs, and 
answer all his implorations for mercy with fiend- 
ish hiss. We must arouse public opinion, un- 
til city, State, and national officials shall no 
longer dare to neglect the execution of the law. 
We have enough enactments now to revolu- 
tionize our cities and strike terror through the 
drinking-houses and gambling-dens and houses 
of sin. Tracts distributed will not do it ; Bi- 
bles printed will not accomplish it ; city mis- 
sionaries have not power for the work. 

Will tracts do it? As well try with three 
or four snow-flakes to put out Cotapaxi ! 

We want police officers, common councilmen, 
aldermen, sheriffs, mayors, who will execute 
the law. Give us for two weeks in our cities 
an honest city hall, and public pollution would 
fall like lightning from heaven ! 

If you republicans, and you democrats, do 
not do your duty in this regard, we will, after a 
while, form a party of our own, and put men in 
position pledged to anti-rum, anti-dirt, anti- 
nuisances, anti-monopolies, anti- abominations, 
and will give to those of you who have been so 
long feeding on public spoils, careless of public 



The Curtain Lifted. 23 

morals, not so much as the wages of a street 
sweeper. 

We are not discouraged. It may seem to 
many that all of our battling against these evils 
will come to naught. But if the coral insects 
can lift an island, our feeble efforts, under God, 
may raise a break-water that will dash back the 
surges of municipal abomination. Beside, we 
toil not in our own strength. 

It seemed insignificant for Moses to stretch 
his hand over the Red Sea. What power 
could that have over the waters ? But the east 
wind blew all night ; the waters gathered into 
two glittering palisades on either side. The 
billows reared as God's hand pulled back upon 
their crystal bits. Wheel into line, Q Israel ! 
March ! March ! Pearls crash under the feet. 
The flying spray springs a rainbow arch over 
the victors. The shout of hosts mounting the 
beach answers the shout of hosts mid-sea ; until, 
as the last line of the Israelites have gained the 
beach, the shields clang, and the cymbals 
clap ; and as the waters whelm the pursuing 
foe, the swift-fingered winds on the white 
keys of the foam play the grand march of Is- 



24 The Abominations. 

rael delivered, and the awful dirge of Egyptian 
overthrow. 

So we go forth ; and stretch out the hand of 
prayer and Christian effort over these dark, 
boiling waters of crime and suffering. "Aha! 
Aha ! " say the deriding world. But wait. 
The winds of divine help will begin to blow ; 
the way will clear for the great army of Chris- 
tian philanthropists ; the glittering treasures of 
the world's beneficence will line the path of our 
feet ; and to the other shore we will be greeted 
with the clash of all heaven's cymbals ; while 
those who resist and deride and pursue us will 
fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left 
of them but here and there, cast high and dry 
upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a char- 
iot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless 
nostril of a riderless charger. 



WINTER NIGHTS. 

The inhabitants of one of the old cities were 
told that they would have to fly for their lives. 
Such flight would be painful, even in the flush 
of spring-time, but superlatively aggravating if 
in cold weather ; and therefore they were told 
to pray that their flight be not in the winter. 

There is something in the winter season that 
not only tests our physical endurance, but, es- 
pecially in the city, tries our moral character. 
It is the winter months that ruin, morally, and 
forever, many of our young men. We sit in 
the house on a winter's night, and hear the 
storm raging on the outside, and imagine the 
helpless crafts driven on the coast ; but if our 
ears were only good enough, we could, on any 
winter night, hear the crash of a hundred moral 
shipwrecks. 

Many who came last September to town, by 
the first of March will have been blasted. It 
only takes one winter to ruin a young man. 
When the long winter evenings have come, 

2 

i 



26 The Abominations. 

many of our young men will improve them in 
forming a more intimate acquaintance with 
books, contracting higher social friendships, and 
strengthening and ennobling their characters. 
But not so with all. I will show you before I 
get through that, at this season of the year, 
temptations are especially rampant : and my 
counsel is, Look out how you spend your winter 
nights ! 

I remark, first, that there is no season of the 
year in which vicious allurements are so active. 

In warm weather, places of dissipation win 
their tamest triumphs. People do not feel like 
going, in the hot nights of summer, among the 
blazing gas-lights, or breathing the fetid air of 
assemblages. The receipts of the grog-shops 
in a December night are three times what they 
are in any night in July or August. I doubt 
not there are larger audiences in the casinos in 
winter than in the summer weather. Iniquity 
plies a more profitable trade. December, Jan- 
uary, and February are harvest-months for the 
devil. The play-bills of the low entertainments 
then are more charming, the acting is more 
exquisite, the enthusiasm of the spectators more 



Winter Nights. 2 J 

bewitching. Many a young man who makes 
out to keep right the rest of the year, capsizes 
now. When he came to town in the autumn, 
his eye was bright, his cheek rosy, his step 
elastic ; but, before spring, as you pass him 
you will say to your friend, " What is the matter 
with that young man ? " The fact is that one 
winter of dissipation has done the work of ruin. 

This is the season for parties ; and, if they are 
of the right kind, our social nature is improved, 
and our spirits cheered up. But many of them 
are not^f the right kind ; and our young people, 
night after night, are kept in the whirl of un- 
healthy excitement until their strength fails, and 
their spirits are broken down, and their taste 
for ordinary life corrupted ; and, by the time 
the spring weather comes, they are in the doc 
tor's hands, or sleeping in the cemetery. The 
certificate of their death is made out, and the 
physician, out of regard for the family, calls the 
disease by some Latin name, when the truth is 
that they died of too many parties. 

Away with these wine-drinking convivialities ! 
How dare you, the father of a household, trifle 
with the appetites of our young people ? Per- 



2 8 The A bom {nations. 

haps, out of regard for the minister, or some 
other weak temperance man, you have the de- 
canter in a side-room, where, after refreshments, 
only a select few are invited ; and you come 
back with a glare in your eye, and a stench in 
your breath, that shows that you have been out 
serving the devil. 

Some one asks, " For what purpose are these 
people gone into that side-room ? " 

" O," replies one who has just come out, 
smacking his lips, " they have gone in to see 
the white dog ! " 

The excuse which Christian men often give for 
this is, that it is necessary, after such late eating, 
by some sort of stimulant to help digestion. 
My plain opinion is, that if a man have no more 
control over his appetite than to stuff himself 
until his digestive organs refuse to do their of- 
fice, he ought not to call himself a man, but 
rather to class himself among the beasts that 
perish. I take the words of the Lord Almighty, 
and cry, " Woe to him that putteth the bottle to 
his neighbor's lips ! " 

Young man, take it as the counsel of a friend, 
when I bid you be cautious where you spend 



Winter Nights. 29 

your winter evenings. Thank God that you 
have lived to see the glad winter days in which 
your childhood was made cheerful by the faces 
of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, 
some of whom, alas ! will never again wish you 
a " happy New Year," or a " Merry Christ- 
mas." 

Let no one tempt you out of your sobriety. 
I have seen respectable young men of the best 
families drunk on New Year's day. The excuse 
they gave for the inebriation was that the ladies 
insisted on their taking it. There have been 
instances where the delicate hand of woman hath 
kindled a young man's taste for strong drink, 
who after many years, when the attractions of 
that holiday scene were all forgotten, crouched 
in her rags, and her desolation, and her woe 
under the uplifted hand of the drunken monster 
who, on that Christmas morning so long ago, 
took the glass from her hand. And so, the 
woman stands on the abutment of the bridge, on 
the moon-lit night, wondering if, down under 
the water, there is not some quiet place for a 
broken heart. She takes one wild leap, — and 
all is over ! 



N 



30 The Abominations. 

Ah ! mingle not with the harmless beverage 
of your festive scene this poison of adders ! 
Mix not with the white sugar of the cup the 
snow of this awful leprosy ! Mar not the clatter 
of cutlery at the holiday feast with the clank of 
a madman's chain ! 

Stop and look into the window of that pawn- 
broker's shop. Elegant furs. Elegant watches. 
Elegant scarfs. Elegant flutes. People stand 
with a pleased look gazing at these things ; but 
I look in with a shudder, as though I had seen 
into a window of hell. 

Whose elegant watch was that ? It was a 
drunkard's watch ! 

Whose furs ? They belonged to a drunk- 
ard's wife ! 

Whose flute ? Whose shoes ? Whose scarf? 
They belonged to a drunkard's child ! 

If I could, I would take the three brazen balls 
hanging at the door-way, and clang them to- 
gether until they tolled the awful knell of the 
drunkard's soul. The pawnbroker's shop is 
only one eddy of the great stream of municipal 
drunkenness. 

Stand back, young man ! Take not the first 



Winter Nights. 31 

step in the path that leads here. Let not the 
flame of strong drink ever scorch your tongue. 
You may tamper with these things and escape, 
but your influence will be wrong. Can you not 
make a sacrifice for the good of others ? 

When the good ship London went down, the 
captain was told that there was a way of escape 
in one of the life-boats. He said — " No ; I will 
go down with the rest of the passengers ! " All 
the world acknowledged that heroism. 

Can you not deny yourself insignificant indul- 
gences for the good of others ? Be not allured 
by the fact that you drink only the moderate 
beverages. You take only ale ; and a man has 
to drink a large amount of it to become intoxi- 
cated. Yes ; but there is not in all the city to- 
day an inebriate that did not begin with ale. 

" XXX : " What does that mark mean ? 
XXX on the beer-barrel : XXX on the brewer's 
dray : XXX on the door of the gin-shop : XXX 
on the side of the bottle. Not being able to 
find any one who could tell me what this mark 
means, I have had to guess that the whole thing 
was an allegory : XXX — that is, thirty heart- 
breaks. Thirty agonies. Thirty desolated 



32 The Abominations, 

homes. Thirty chances for a drunkard's grave. 
Thirty ways to perdition. 

"XXX." If I were going to write a story, 
the first chapter would be XXX. ; the last — 
"A pawnbroker's shop." 

Be watchful ! At this season all the allure- 
ments to dissipation will be especially busy. 
Let not your flight to hell be in the winter. 

I also remark that the winter evenings, 
through their very length, allow great swing 
for indulgences. Few young men would have 
the taste to go to their room at seven o'clock, 
and sit until eleven, reading Motley's Dutch 
Republic or John Foster's Essays. The young 
men who have been confined to the store all 
day want fresh air and sight-seeing ; and they 
must go somewhere. The most of them have, 
of a winter's evening, three or four hours of 
leisure. After the evening repast, the young 
man puts on his hat and coat and goes out. 

" Come in here," cries one form of allure- 
ment. 

" Come in here," cries another. 

" Go ; " says Satan. " You ought to see for 
yourself." 



Winter Nights. $$ 

" Why don't you go ?" says a comrade. " It 
is a shame for a young man to be as green 
as you are. By this time you ought to have 
seen everything." 

Especially is temptation strong in such times 
as this, when business is dull. I have noticed 
that men spend more money when they have 
little to spend. 

The tremendous question to be settled by 
our great populace, day by day, is how to get 
a livelihood. Many of our young men, just 
starting for themselves, are very much discour- 
aged. They had hoped before this to have set 
up a household of their own. But their gains 
have been slow, and their discouragements 
many. The young man can hardly take care 
of himself. How can he take care of another ? 
And, to the curse of modern society, before a 
young man is able to set up a home of his own, 
he is expected to have enough to support in 
idleness somebody else ; when God intended 
that they should begin together, and jointly 
earn a livelihood. So, many of our young men 
are utterly discouraged, and utterly unfit to 
resist temptation. 



34 The Abominations. 

The time the pirate bears down upon the ship 
is when its sails are down and it is making no 
headway. 

People wish they had more time to think. 
The trouble is now, that people have too much 
time to think. Give to many of our commer- 
cial men the four hours of these winter nights, 
with nothing to divert them, and before spring 
they will have lodgings in an insane asylum. 

I remark further, that the winter is especially 
trying to* the moral character of our young men, 
because some of their homes in winter are es- 
pecially unattractive. In summer they can sit 
on the steps, or have a bouquet in the vase on 
the mantel ; and the evenings are so short that 
soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. 
Parents do not take enough pains to make these 
long winter nights attractive. 

It is strange that old people know so little 
about young people. One would think that 
they had never been young themselves, but 
had been born with their spectacles on. It is 
dolorous for young people to spend the three 
or four hours of a winter's evening with parents 
who sit talking over their own ailments and 



Winter Nights. 35 

misfortunes, and the nothingness of this world. 
How dare you talk such blasphemy ? God 
was busy six days in making the world, and 
has allowed it to hang six thousand years on his 
holy heart ; and that world hath fed you, and 
clothed you, and shone on you for fifty years : 
and yet you talk about the nothingness of this 
world ! Do you expect the young people in 
your family to sit a whole evening and hear 
you groan about this magnificent, star-lighted, 
sun-warmed, shower-baptized, flower-strewn, 
angel-watched, God-inhabited planet ? From 
such homes young men make a wild plunge 
into dissipation. Many of you have the 
means : why do you not buy them a violin or 
a picture ? or have your daughter cultured in 
music until she can help to make home at- 
tractive ? 

There are ten thousand ways of lighting up 
the domestic circle. It requires no large in- 
come, no big house, no rich wardrobe, no 
chased silver, no gorgeous upholstery, but a 
parental heart awake to its duty. 

Have a doleful home and your children will 
not stay in it, though you block up the door 



2,6 The Abominations. 

with Bibles, and tie fast to them a million Hei- 
delberg catechisms. 

I said to a man, "This is a beautiful tree in 
front of your house." 

He answered, with a whine, "Yes; but it 
will fade." 

I said to him, "You have a beautiful gar- 
den." 

He replied, " Yes ; but it will perish." 

I found out afterward that his son was a 
vagabond, and I was not surprised at it. 

You cannot groan men into decency, but you 
can groan them out. 

Pray ye that your flight be not in the win- 
ter ! Devote these December, January and 
February evenings to high pursuits, innocent 
amusements, intelligent socialities, and Christian 
attainments. Do not waste this winter. We 
shall soon have seen the last snow-shower, and 
have passed up into the companionship of Him 
whose raiment is exceeding white as snow — as 
no fuller on earth can whiten it. 

To the right-hearted, the winter nights of 
earth will soon end in the June morning of 
heaven. 



Winter Nights, '37 

The River of God, from under the Throne, 
never freezes over. The foliage of Life's fair 
tree is never frost-bitten. The festivals, and 
hilarities, and family gatherings of Christmas 
times on earth, will give way to the larger re- 
unions, and the brighter lights, and the gladder 
scenes, and the sweeter garlands, and the richer 
feastings of the great holiday of Heaven. 



THE POWER OF CLOTHES. 

One cannot always tell by a man's coat what 
kind of a heart he has under it ; still, his dress 
is apt to be the out-blossoming of his character, 
and is not to be disregarded. 

We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon 
customs of dress. Why did God put spots on 
the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are 
china-asters good for if style and color are of 
no importance ? 

The realm is as -wide as the world, and as 
far-reaching as all the generations, over which 
fashion hath extended her sceptre. For thou- 
sands of years she hath sat queen over all the 
earth, and the revolutions that rock down all 
other thrones have not in the slighest affected 
her domination. Other constitutions have been 
torn, and other laws trampled ; but to her de- 
crees conquerors have bowed their plumes, and 
kings have uncovered. Victoria is not Queen 
of England ; Napoleon was not Emperor of 



The Pozver of Clothes. 39 

France ; Isabella was not Queen of Spain. 
Fashion has been regnant over all the earth ; 
and lords and dukes, kings and queens, have 
been the subjects of her realm. 

She arranged the mantle of the patriarch, and 
the toga of the Roman ; the small shoe of the 
Chinese women, and the turban of the Turk ; 
the furs of the Laplander, and the calumet of the 
Indian chieftain. Hottentot and Siberian obey 
the mandate, as well as Englishman and Ameri- 
can. Her laws are written on parchment and 
palm-leaf, on broken arch and cathedral tracery. 
She arranged how the Egyptian mummy should 
be wound, and how Caesar should ride, and how 
the Athenians should speak, and how through 
the Venetian canals the gondoliers should row 
their pleasure-boat. Her hand hath hung the 
pillars with embroidery, and strewn the floor 
with plush. Her loom hath woven fabrics 
graceful as the snow and pure as the light. 
Her voice is heard in the gold mart, in the roar 
of the street, in the shuffle of the crowded ba- 
zaars, in the rattle of the steam-presses, and in 
the songs of the churches. 

You have limited your observation of the 



40 The Abominations. 

sway of fashion if you have considered it only 
as it decides individual and national costumes. 
It makes the rules of behavior. It wields an 
influence in artistic spheres — often deciding 
what pictures shall hang in the house, what 
music shall be played, what ornaments shall 
stand upon the mantle. The poor man will not 
have on his wall the cheap wood-cut that he 
can afford, because he cannot have a great daub 
like that which hangs on the rich man's wall, 
and costing three hundred dollars. 

Fashion helps to make up religious belief. It 

often decides to what church we shall go, and 

. what religious tenets we shall adopt. It goes 

into the pulpit, and decides the gown, and the 

surplice, and the style of rhetoric. 

It goes into literature and arranges the bind* 
ing, the type, the illustrations of the book, and 
oftentimes the sentiments expressed and the 
theories evolved. 

Men the most independent in feeling are by 
it compelled to submit to social customs. And 
before I stop I want to show you that fashion 
has been one of the most potent of reformers, 
and one of the vilest of usurpers. Sometimes 



The Power of Clothes. 41 

it has been an angel from heaven, and at others 
it has been the mother of harlots. 

As the world grows better there will be as 
much fashion as now, but it will be a different 
fashion. In the future life white robes always 
have been and always will be in the fashion. 

There is a great outcry against this submission 
to social custom, as though any consultation of 
the tastes and feelings of others were deplorable ; 
but without it the world would have neither law, 
order, civilization, nor common decency. 

There has been a canonization of bluntness. 
There are men and women who boast that they 
can tell you all they know and hear about you, 
especially if it be unpleasant. Some have mis- 
taken rough behavior for frankness, when the 
two qualities do not belong to the same family. 
You have no right, with your eccentricities, to 
t:rash in upon the sensitiveness of others. There 
is no virtue in walking with hoofs over fine car- 
pets. The most jagged rock is covered with 
blossoming moss. The storm that comes jarring 
down in thunder strews rainbow colors upon the 
sky, and silvery drops on orchard and meadow. 

There are men who pride themselves on their 
3 



42 The Abominations. 

capacity to "■ stick" others. They say "I have 
brought him down : Didn't I make him 
squirm ! " 

Others pride themselves on their outlandish 
apparel. They boast of being out of the fash- 
ion. They wear a queer hat. They ride in an 
odd carriage. By dint of perpetual applica- 
tion they would persuade the world that they 
are perfectly indifferent to public opinion. 
They are more proud of being '• out of fash- 
ion " than others are of being in. They are 
utterly and universally disagreeable. Their 
rough corners have never been worn off. They 
prefer a hedge-hog to a lamb. 

The accomplishments of life are in nowise 
productive of effeminacy or enervation. Good 
manners and a respect for the tastes of others 
is indispensable. The Good Book speaks fa- 
vorably of those who are a "peculiar" people j) 
but that does not sanction the behavior of queer 
people. There is no excuse, under any cir- 
cumstances, for not being and acting the lady 
or gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no 
words too ardent to express our admiration for 
the refinements of society. There is no law, 



The Power of Clothes. 43 

moral or divine, to forbid elegance of demean- 
or, ornaments of gold or gems for the person, 
artistic display in the dwelling, gracefulness of 
gait and bearing, polite salutation, or honest 
compliments ; and he who is shocked or of- 
fended by these had better, like the old Scyth- 
ians, wear tiger-skins, and take one wild leap 
back into midnight barbarism. 

As Christianity advances there will be better 
apparel, higher styles of architecture, more ex- 
quisite adornments, sweeter music, grander pic- 
tures, more correct behavior, and more thor- 
ough ladies and gentlemen. 

But there is another story to be told. Exces- 
sive fashion is to be charged with many of the 
worst evils of society, and its path has often 
been strewn with the bodies of the slain. 

It has often set up a false standard by which 
people are to be judged. Our common sense, 
as well as all the divine intimations on the sub- 
ject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed 
according to their individual and moral attain- 
ments. The man who has the most nobility of 
soul should be first, and he who has the least of 
such qualities should stand last. No crest, or 



44 The Abominations. 

shield, or escutcheon, can indicate one's moral 
peerage. Titles of duke, lord, esquire, earl, 
viscount, or patrician, ought not to raise one 
into the first rank. Some of the meanest men I 
have ever known had at the end of their name 
D.D., LL.D., and F.R.S. Truth, honor, 
charity, heroism, self-sacrifice, should win high- 
est favor ; but inordinate fashion says — " Count 
not a woman's virtues ; count her rings ; '' 
" Look not at the contour of the head, but see 
the way she combs her hair;" "Ask not 
what noble deeds have been accomplished by 
that man's hand ; but is it white and soft ? *' 
Ask not what good sense was in her conver- 
sation, but "in what was she dressed." Ask 
not whether there was hospitality and cheerful- 
ness in the house, but " in what style do they 
live." 

As a consequence, some of the most ignorant 
and vicious men are at the top, and some of the 
most virtuous and intelligent at the bottom. 
During the late war we suddenly saw men hurl- 
ed up into the highest social positions. Had 
they suddenly reformed from evil habits ? or 
graduated in a science ? or achieved some good 



The Power of Clothes. 45 

work for society ? No ! They simply had ob« 
tained a government contract ! 

This accounts for the utter chagrin which 
men feel at the treatment they receive when 
they lose their property. Hold up your head 
amid financial disaster, like a Christian ! Fifty 
thousand subtracted from a good man leaves 
how much ? Honor ; Truth ; Faith in God ; 
Triumphant Hope ; and a kingdom of ineffable 
glory, over which he is to reign forever and 
ever. 

If a millionnaire should lose a penny out of his 
pocket, would he sit down on a curb-stone and 
cry ? And shall a man possessed of everlasting 
fortunes wear himself out with grief because he 
has lost worldly treasure ? You have only lost 
that in which hundreds of wretched misers 
surpass you ; and you have saved that which 
the Caesars, and the Pharaohs, and the Alexan- 
ders could never afford. 

And yet society thinks differently ; and you 
see the most intimate friendships broken up as 
the consequence of financial embarrassments. 
You say to some one — " How is your friend — ? " 
The man looks bewildered, and says, "I do 



46 The Abominations. 

not know." You reply, ''Why; you used to 
be intimate." "Well," says the man, "our 
friendship has been dropped: the man has 
failed." 

Proclamation has gone forth : " Velvets must 
go up, and homespun must come down ; " and 
the question is "How does the coat fit?" — 
not, " Who wears it?" The power that bears 
the tides of excited population up and down 
our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, 
and thrills all nations, Transatlantic and Cis- 
atlantic, is — clothes. It decides the last offices 
of respect ; and how long the dress shall be 
totally black ; and when it may subside into 
spots of grief on silk, calico, or gingham. Men 
die in good circumstances, but by reason of 
extravagant funeral expenses are well nigh 
insolvent before they get buried. Many men 
would not die at all, if they had to wait until 
they could afford it. 

Excessive fashion is productive of a most 
ruinous strife. The expenditure of many 
households is adjusted by what their neighbors 
have, not by what they themselves can afford 
to have ; and the great anxiety is as to who 



The Power of Clothes. 47 

shall have the finest house and the most costly 
equipage. The weapons used in the warfare 
of social life are not Minie rifles, and Dahl- 
gren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs 
and mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Ax- 
minsters. Many household establishments are 
like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost 
strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific 
explosion. "Who cares," say they, "if we 
only come out ahead ? " 

There is no one cause to-day of more finan- 
cial embarrassment, and of more dishonesties, 
than this determination, at all hazards, to live as 
well as or better than other people. There are 
persons who will risk their eternity upon one 
fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the 
splendors of heaven to get another trinket. 

".My house is too small." M But," says some 
one, "you cannot pay for a larger." " Never 
mind that ; my friends have a better residence, 
and so will I." "A dress of that pattern I must 
have. I cannot afford it by a great deal ; but 
who cares for that ? My neighbor had one from 
that pattern, and I must have one." There are 
scores of men in the dungeons of the peniten- 



48 The A bom {nations. 

tiary, who risked honor, business, — everything, 
in the effort to shine like others. Though the 
heavens fall, they must be "in the fashion." 

The most famous frauds of the day have re- 
sulted from this feeling. It keeps hundreds of 
men struggling for their commercial existence. 
The trouble is that some are caught and incar- 
cerated, if their larceny be small. If it be great, 
they escape, and build their castle on the Rhine. 
Men go into jail, not because they steal, but 
because they did not steal enough. 

Again : excessive fashion makes people un- 
natural and untrue. It is a factory from which 
has come forth more hollow pretences, and 
unmeaning flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the 
Lowell Mills ever turned out shawls and gar- 
ments. 

Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has 
made society insincere. You know not what to 
believe. When people ask you to come, you 
do not know whether or not they want you to 
come. When they send their regards, you do 
not know whether it is an expression of their 
heart, or an external civility. We have learned 
to take almost everything it a discount. Word 



The Power of Clothes. 49 

is sent, " Not at home," when they are only too 
lazy to dress themselves. They say, " The fur- 
nace has just gone out," when in truth they 
have had no fire in it all winter. They apologize 
for the unusual barrenness of their table, when 
they never live any better. They decry their 
most luxurious entertainments, to win a shower 
of approval. They apologize for their appear- 
ance, as though it were unusual, when always 
at home they look just so. They would make 
you believe that some nice sketch on the wall 
was the work of a master painter. "It was an 
heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a 
castle ; and a duke gave it to their grand- 
father." People who will lie about nothing 
else, will lie about a picture. On a small in- 
come we must make the world believe that we 
are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a 
counterfeit, and a sham. 

Few persons are really natural. When I say 
this, I do not mean to slur cultured manners. 
It is right that we should have more admiration 
for the sculptured marble than for the unhewn 
block of the quarry. From many circles in 

life fashion has driven out vivacity and enthusi- 

3 



50 The Abominations. 

asm. A frozen dignity instead floats about the 
room, and iceberg grinds against iceberg. 
You must not laugh outright : it is vulgar. 
You must smile. You must not dash rapidly 
across the room : you must glide. There is a 
round of bows, and grins, and flatteries, and 
oh's ! and ah's ! and simperings, and namby- 
pambyism — a world of which is not worth one 
good, round, honest peal of laughter. From 
such a hollow round the tortured guest retires 
at the close of the evening, and assures his host 
that he has enjoyed himself. 

Thus social life has been contorted, and de- 
formed, until, in some mountain cabin, where 
rustics gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, 
there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed 
ice-houses of the metropolis. 

We want, in all the higher circles of society, 
more warmth of heart and naturalness of be- 
havior, and not so many refrigerators. 

Again : inordinate fashion is incompatible 
with happiness. Those who depend for their 
comfort upon the admiration of others are 
subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody 
will criticise their appearance, or surpass them 



The Power of Clothes. 51 

in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. 
Oh ! the jealousy, and detraction, and heart- 
burnings of those who move in this bewildered 
maze ! 

The clock strikes one, and the company be- 
gins to disperse. The host has done everything 
to make all his guests happy ; but now that 
they are on the street, hear their criticisms of 
everybody and everything. " Did you see her 
in such and such apparel ? ,; "Wasn't she a 
perfect fright!" "What a pity that such an 
one is so awkward and uncouth ! " " Well, real- 
ly, — I would rather never be spoken to than 
be seen with such a man as that ! " 

Poor butterflies! Bright wings do not al- 
ways bring happiness. u She that liveth in 
pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revela- 
tions of high life that come to the challenge 
and the fight are only the occasional croppings 
out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like 
the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the 
demons of the pit for hate. The misery that 
to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw is 
not so utter as the princely disquietude which 
stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, broodr 



52 The Abominations. 

ing over the slights and offences of high life. 
The bitterness of trouble seems not so unfitting, 
when drunk out of a pewter mug, as when it 
pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. 
In the sharp crack of the voluptuary's pistol, 
putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the 
confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life 
there is no peace. 

Again : Excessive devotion to fashion is pro- 
ductive of physical disease, mental imbecility, 
and spiritual withering. 

Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and 
the rain, or so fitted upon the person that the 
functions of life are restrained ; late hours, filled 
with excitement and feasting ; free draughts of 
wine, that make one not beastly intoxicated, 
but only fashionably drunk ; and luxurious in- 
dolence—are the instruments by which this un- 
real life pushes its disciples into valetudinarian- 
ism and the grave. Along the walks of high 
life Death goes a mowing — and such harvests 
as are reaped ! Materia medica has been ex- 
hausted to find curatives for these physiological 
devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, 
gout, and almost every infirmity in all the realm 



The Power of Clothes. 53 

of pathology, have been the penalty paid. To 
counteract the damage, pharmacy has gone 
forth with medicament, panacea, elixir, embro- 
cation, salve, and cataplasm. 

To-night, with swollen feet, upon cushioned 
ottoman, and groaning with aches innumerable, 
is the votary of luxurious living, not half so 
happy as his groom or coal-heaver. 

Fashion is the world's undertaker, and drives 
thousands of hearses to Laurel Hill and Green- 
wood. 

But, worse than that, this folly is an intellect- 
ual depletion. This endless study of propri- 
eties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is 
bedwarfing to the intellect. I never knew a 
man or a woman of extreme fashion that knew 
much. How belittling the study of the cut of a 
coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a 
shoe, or the color of a ribbon ! How they are 
worried if something gets untied, or hangs 
awry, or is not nicely adjusted ! With a mind 
capable of measuring the height and depth of 
great subjects ; able to unravel mysteries ; to 
walk through the universe ; to soar up into the 
infinity of God's attributes, — hovering perpetu- 



54 The Abominations. 

ally over a new style of mantilla ! I have 
known men, reckless as to their character, and 
regardless of interests momentous and eternal, 
exasperated by the shape of a vest -button ! 

What is the matter with that woman — wrought 
up into the agony of despair ? O, her muff 
is out of fashion ! 

Worse than all — this folly is not satisfied 
until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, 
and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock 
upon which many a soul has been riven. The 
excitement of a luxurious life has been the 
vortex that has swallowed up more souls than 
the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. 
What room for elevating themes in a heart 
fitted with the trivial and unreal ? Who can 
wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles 
and winged thistle-down, men should tumble 
into ruin ? The travellers to destruction are not 
all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles 
against chariot ; and behind steeds in harness 
golden-plated and glittering, they go down, 
coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing 
on the hot pavements of hell. Clear the track ! 
Bazaars hang out their colors over the road ; 



The Power of Clothes. 55 

and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the 
way. No sound of woe disturbs the air ; but 
all is light and song, and wine and gorgeousness. 
The world comes out to greet the dazzling pro- 
cession with Hurrah ! and Hurrah ! But, sud- 
denly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, 
and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea 
tumbling upon the Egyptians. Shadow of 
grave-stones upon finest silk ! Wormwood 
squeezed into impearled goblets ! Death, with 
one cold breath, withering the leaves and freez- 
ing the fountains. 

In the wild tumult of the last day — the 
mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones 
uprising, the universe assembling ; amid the 
boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under 
the crackling of a burning world — what will 
become of the fop and the dandy ? 

He who is genuinely refined will be useful 
and happy. There is no gate that a gentleman's 
hand cannot open. During his last sickness 
there will be a timid knock at the basement 
door by those who have come to see how 
he is. 

But watch the career of one thoroughly arti- 



56 The Abominations. 

ficial. Through inheritance, or perhaps his own 
skill, having obtained enough for purposes of 
display, he feels himself thoroughly established. 
He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks 
out of his window upon the poor man, and says 
— " Put that dirty wretch off my steps immedi- 
ately ! " On Sabbath days he finds the church, 
but mourns the fact that he must worship with 
so many of the inelegant, and says, " They are 
perfectly awful ! " " That man that you put in 
my pew had a coat on his back that did not 
cost five dollars." He struts through life un- 
sympathetic with trouble, and says, " I cannot 
be bothered." Is delighted with some doubtful 
story of Parisian life, but thinks that there are 
some very indecent things in the Bible. Walks 
arm in arm with a millionnaire, but does not 
know his own brother. Loves to be praised for 
his splendid house ; and when told that he looks 
younger than ten years ago, says — "Well, 
really ; do you think so ! " 

But the brief strut of his life is about over. 
Up-stairs — he dies. No angel wings hovering 
about him. No gospel promises kindling up 
the darkness ; — but exquisite embroidery, ele- 



The Power of Clothes. 57 

gant pictures, and a bust of Shakespeare on 
the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister 
comes in to read of the Resurrection, that day 
when the dead shall come up — both he that 
died on the floor, and he that expired under 
princely upholstery. He is • carried out to 
burial. Only a few mourners, but a great 
array of carriages. Not one common man at 
the funeral. No befriended orphan to weep a 
tear upon his grave. No child of want press- 
ing through the ranks of the weeping, saying — 
"He is the last friend I have; and I must see 
him." 

What now ? He was a great man : Shall not 
chariots of salvation come down to the other 
side of the Jordan, and escort him up to the 
palace ? Shall not the angels exclaim — " Turn 
out! a prince is coming." Will the bells 
chime ? Will there be harpers with their harps, 
and trumpeters with their trumpets ? 

No ! No ! No ! There will be a shudder, as 
though a calamity had happened. Standing 
on heaven's battlement, a watchman will see 
something shoot past, with fiery downfall, 
and shriek : " Wandering star — for whom 



►* 



5« 



The . Abominations. 



is reserved the blackness of darkness for- 
ever ! " 

With the funeral pageant the brilliant career 
terminated. There was a great array of car- 
riages. 



AFTER MIDNIGHT. 

WHEN night came down on Babylon, Nine- 
veh, and Jerusalem, they needed careful watch- 
ing, otherwise the incendiary's torch might 
have been thrust into the very heart of the 
metropolitan splendor ; or enemies, marching 
from the hills, might have forced the gates. 
All night long, on top of the wall and in front 
of the gates, might be heard the measured step 
of the watchman on his solitary beat ; silence 
hung in air, save as some passer-by raised the 
question : " Watchman, what of the night ? " 

It is to me a deeply suggestive and solemn 
thing to see a man standing guard by night. 
It thrilled through me, as at the gate of an 
arsenal in Charleston, the question once smote 
me, "Who comes there?" followed by the 
sharp command : "Advance and give the coun- 
tersign." Every moral teacher stands on pick- 
et, or patrols the wall as watchman. His 
work is to sound the alarm ; and whether it be 
in the first watch, in the second watch, in the 



I 



60 The Abominations. 

third watch, or in the fourth watch, to be vigi- 
lant until the daybreak flings its " morning 
glories " of blooming cloud across the arching 
trellis of the sky. 

The ancients divided their night into four 
parts — the first watch, from six to nine ; the 
second, from nine to twelve; the third, from 
twelve to three ; and the fourth, from three to 
six. 

I speak now of the city in the third watch, or 
from twelve to three o'clock. 

I never weary of looking upon the life and 
brilliancy of the city in the first watch. That 
is the hour when the stores are closing. The 
laboring men, having quitted the scaffolding and 
the shop, are on their way home. It rejoices me 
to give them my seat in the city car. They 
have stood and hammered away all day. Their 
feet are weary. They are exhausted with the 
tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With 
appetites sharpened on the swift turner's wheel 
and the carpenter's whetstone, they seek the 
evening meal. The clerks, too, have broken 
away from the counter, and with brain weary 
of the long line of figures, and the whims of 



After Midnight. 61 

those who go a-shopping, seek the face of 
mother, or wife and child. The merchants are 
unharnessing themselves from their anxieties, 
on their way up the street. The boys that lock 
up are heaving away at the shutters, shoving 
the heavy bolts, and taking a last look at the 
fire to see that all is safe. The streets are 
thronged with young men, setting out from the 
great centres of bargain-making. 

Let idlers clear the street, and give right of 
way to the besweated artisans and merchants ! 
They have earned their bread, and are now on 
their way home to get it. 

The lights in full jet hang over ten thousand 
evening repasts — the parents at either end of 
the table, the children between. Thank God ! 
"who setteth the solitary in families ! " 

A few hours later, and all the places of 
amusement, good and bad, are in full tide. 
Lovers of art, catalogue in hand, stroll through 
the galleries and discuss the pictures. The ball- 
room is resplendent with the rich apparel of 
those who, on either side of the white, glisten- 
ing boards, await the signal from the orchestra, 
The footlights of the theatre flash up ; the bell 



62 The Abominations. 

rings, and the curtain rises ; and out from the 
gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with 
the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. 
Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with 
the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a 
sea of tumultuous feeling by the blast of brazen 
instruments. Drawing-rooms are filled with all 
gracefulness of apparel, with all sweetness of 
sound, with all splendor of manner ; mirrors are 
catching up and multiplying the scene, until it 
seems as if in infinite corridors there were gar- 
landed groups advancing and retreating. 

The out-door air rings with laughter, and with 
the moving to and fro of thousands on the great 
promenades. The dashing span, adrip with the 
foam of the long country ride, rushes past as 
you halt at the curb-stone. 

Mirth, revelry, beauty, fashion, magnificence 
mingle in the great metropolitan picture, until 
the thinking man goes home to think more seri- 
ously, and the praying man to pray more ear- 
nestly. 

A beautiful and overwhelming thing is the 
city in the first and second watches of the night. 

But the clock strikes twelve, and the third 



After Midnight. 63 

watch begins. The thunder of the city has roll- 
ed from the air. Slight sounds now cut the 
night with a distinctness that excites your atten- 
tion. You hear the tinkling of the bell of the 
street-car in the far distance ; the baying of the 
dog ; the stamp of the horse in the adjoining 
street ; the slamming of a saloon door ; the hic- 
coughing of the inebriate ; and the shriek of the 
steam-whistle five miles away. Solemn and 
stupendous is this third watch. There are re- 
spectable men abroad. The city missionary is 
going up that court, to take a scuttle of coal to 
a poor family. The undertaker goes up the 
steps of that house, from which there comes a 
bitter cry, as though the destroying angel had 
smitten the first-born. The minister of Jesus 
passes along ; he has been giving the sacrament 
to a dying Christian. The physician hastens 
past, the excited messenger a few steps ahead, 
impatient to reach the threshold. Men who are 
forced to toil into the midnight are hastening to 
their pillow. But the great multitudes are 
asleep. The lights are out in the dwellings, 
save here and there one. That is the light of 
the watcher, for the remedies must be adminis- 



64 The Abominations. 

tered, and the fever guarded, and the restless 
tossing of the coverlet resisted, and the ice 
kept upon the temples, and the perpetual prayer 
offered by hearts soon to be broken. The 
street-lamps, standing in long line, reveal the 
silence and the slumber of the town. 

Stupendous thought : a great city asleep ! 
Weary arm gathering strength for to-morrow's 
toil. Hot brain getting cooled off. Rigid 
muscles relaxing. Excited nerves being sooth- 
ed. White locks of the octogenarian in thin 
drifts across the white pillow — fresh fall of flakes 
on snow already fallen. Children with dimpled 
hands thrown out over the pillow, with every 
breath inhaling a new store of fun and frolic. 

Let the great hosts sleep ! A slumberless 
Eye will watch them. Silent be the alarm-bells 
and merciful the elements ! Let one great wave 
of refreshing slumber roll across the heart of the 
great town, submerging trouble and weariness 
and pain. It is the third watch of the night, 
and time for the city to sleep. 

But be not deceived. There are thousands 
of people in the great town who will not sleep a 
moment to-night. Go up that dark court. Be 



After Midnight. 65 

careful, or you will fall over the prostrate form 
of a drunkard lying on his own worn step. Look 
about you, or you will feel the garroter's hug. 
Try to look in through that broken pane ! 
What do you see ? Nothing. But listen. 
What is it ? " God help us ! " No footlights, 
but tragedy — mightier, ghastlier than Ristori or 
Edwin Booth ever acted. No bread. No light. 
No fire. No cover. They lie strewn upon the 
floor — two whole families in one room. They 
shiver in the darkness. They have had no food 
to-day. You say: ''Why don't they beg?" 
They did beg, but got nothing. You say : 
" Hand them over to the almshouse." 

Ah ! they had rather die than go to the alms- 
house. Have you never heard the bitter cry of 
the man or of the child when told that he must 
go to the almshouse ? 

You say that these are vicious poor, and have 
brought their own misfortune on themselves. 

So much the more to be pitied. The Chris- 
tian poor — God helps them ! Through their 
night there twinkles the round, merry star of 
hope, and through the cracked window-pane of 
their hovel they see the crystals of heaven. 



66 The Abominations, 

But the vicious are the more to be pitied. 
They have no hope. They are in hell now. 
They have put out their last light. People ex- 
cuse themselves from charity by saying they do 
not deserve to be helped. If I have ten prayers 
for the innocent, I shall have twenty for the 
guilty. If a ship be dashed upon the rocks, the 
fisherman, in his hut on the beach, will wrap 
the warmest flannels around those who are the 
most chilled and battered. The vicious poor 
have suffered two awful wrecks, the wreck of 
the body, and the wreck of the soul ; a wreck 
for time and a wreck for eternity. 

Go up that alley ! Open the door. It is not 
locked. They have nothing to lose. No bur- 
glar would want anything that is there. There 
is only a broken chair set against the door. 
Strike a match and look around you. Beastli- 
ness and rags ! A shock of hair hanging over 
the scarred visage. Eyes glaring upon you. 
Offer no insult. Be careful what you say. 
Your life is not worth much in such a place. 
See that red mark on the wall. That is the 
mark of a murderer's hand. From the cor- 
ner a wild face starts out of the straw and 



After Midnight. 6y 

moves toward you, just as your light goes 
out. 

Strike another match. Here is a little babe. 
It does not laugh. It never will laugh. A sea- 
flower flung on an awfully barren beach : O that 
the Shepherd would fold that lamb ! Wrap 
your shawl about you, for the 'January wind 
sweeps in. Strike another match. The face of 
that young woman is bruised and gashed now, 
but a mother once gazed upon it in ecstasy of 
fondness. Awful stare of two eyes that seem 
looking up from the bottom of woe. Stand 
back. No hope has dawned on that soul for 
years. Hope never will dawn upon it. Utter 
no scorn. The match has gone out. Light it 
not again, for it would seem to be a mockery. 

Pass out ! Pass on ! Know that there are 
thousands of such abodes in our cities. An 
awful, gloomy, and overwhelming picture is 
the city in the third watch. 

After midnight the crime of the city does its 
chief work. At eight and a half o'clock in the 
evening the criminals of the city are at leisure. 
They are mostly in the drinking saloons. It 
needs courage to do what they propose to do. 



68 The Abominations. 

Rum makes men reckless. They are getting 
their brain and hand just right. Toward mid- 
night they go to their garrets. They gather 
their tools. Soon after the third watch thev 
stalk forth, silently, looking out for the police, 
through the alleys to their appointed work. 
This is a burglar ; and the door-lock will fly 
open at the touch of the false keys. That 
is an incendiary ; and before morning there 
will be a light on the sky, and a cry of " Fire ! 
Fire ! " That is an assassin ; and a lifeless 
body will be found to-morrow in some of the 
vacant lots. 

During all the day there are hundreds of vil- 
lains to be found lounging about, a part of the 
time asleep, a part of the time awake; but at 
twelve to-night they will rouse up, and their 
eyes will be keen, and their minds acute, and 
their arms strong, and their foot fleet to fly or 
pursue. Many of them have been brought up 
to the work. They were born in a thief's gar- 
ret. Their childish plaything was a burglar's 
dark lantern. As long ago as they can remem- 
ber, they saw, toward morning, the mother 
binding up the father's head, wounded by a 



After Midnight. 69 

watchman's billet. They began by picking 
boys' pockets, and now they can dig an under- 
ground passage to the cellar of the bank, or will 
blast open the door of the gold vault. So long 
as the children of the street are neglected there 
will be no lack of desperadoes. 

In the third watch of the night the gambling- 
houses are in full blast. What though the 
hours of the night are slipping away, and the 
wife sits waiting in the cheerless home ! Stir 
up the fires ! Bring on the drinks ! Put up 
the stakes ! A whole fortune may be made be- 
fore morning ! Some of the firms that two 
years ago first put out their sign of copartnership 
have already foundered on the gambler's table. 
The money-drawer in many a mercantile house 
will this year mysteriously spring aleak. Gam- 
ing is a portentous vice, and is making great 
efforts to become respectable. Recently a 
member of Congress played with a member 
elect, carrying off a trophy of one hundred and 
twenty thousand dollars. The old-fashioned 
way of getting a fortune is too slow ! Let us 
toss up and see who shall have it ! 

And so it goes, from the wheezing wretches 



Jo The Abominations. 

who pitch pennies in a rum grocery, to the mil- 
lionnaire gamblers in the gold-market. 

After midnight the eye of God will look 
down and see uncounted gambling-saloons ply- 
ing their destruction. Passing down the street 
to-night, you may hear the wrangling of the 
gamblers mingling with the rattle of the dice, 
and the clear, sharp crack of the balls on the 
billiard-table. 

The finest rooms in the city are gambling 
dens. In gilded parlor, amid costly tapestry, 
you may behold these dens of death. These 
houses have walls attractive with elaborate 
fresco and gems of painting — no sham artist's 
daub, but a masterpiece. Mantel and table 
glitter with vases and statuettes. Divans and 
lounges with deep cushions, the perfection of 
upholstery, invite to rest and repose. Aquaria 
alive with fins and strewn with tinged shells 
and zoophytes. Tufts of geranium, from bead 
baskets, suspended mid-room, drop their 
witching perfume. Fountains gushing up, 
sprinkling the air with sparkles, or gushing 
through the mouth of the marble lion. Long 
mirrors, mounted with scrolls and wings and 



After Midnight. 71 

exquisite carvings, catching and reflecting back 
the magnificence. At their doors merchant- 
princes dismount from their carriages ; official 
dignitaries enter ; legislators, tired of making 
laws, here take a respite in breaking them. 

From all classes this crime is gathering its 
victims : the importer of foreign silks, and the 
Chatham street dealer in pocket-handkerchiefs ; 
clerks taking a game in the store after the 
shutters are put up ; and officers of the court 
whiling away the time while the jury are out. 
In the woods around Baden Baden, in the 
morning, it is no rare thing to find the suspend- 
ed bodies of suicides. No splendor of sur- 
roundings can hide the dreadful nature of this 
sin. In the third watch of this very night, the 
tears of thousands of orphans and widows will 
dash up in those fountains. The thunders of 
eternal destruction roll in the deep rumble of 
that ten-pin alley. And as from respectable 
circles young men and old are falling in line of 
procession, all the drums of woe begin to beat 
the dead march often thousand souls. 

Seven millions of dollars are annually lost in 
New York city at the gaming-table. Some of 



J 2 The Abominations. . 

your own friends may be at it. The agents of 
these gaming-houses around our hotels are well 
dressed. They meet a stranger in the city ; 
they ask him if he would like to see the city ; 
he says, " Yes ; " they ask him if he has seen 
that splendid building up town, and he says 
"No." "Then," says the villain to the green- 
horn, " I will show you the lions and the 
elephants." After seeing the lions and the 
elephants, I would not give much for a young 
man's chance for decency or heaven. He looks 
in, and sees nothing objectionable ; but let him 
beware, for he is on enchanted ground. Look 
out for the men who have such sleek hats — 
always sleek hats — and such a patronizing air, 
and who are so unaccountably intejested in 
your welfare and entertainment. All that they 
want of you is your money. A young man on 
Chestnut street, Philadelphia, lost in a night all 
his money at the gaming-table, and, before he 
left the table, blew his brains out ; but before 
the maid had cleaned up the blood the players 
were again at the table, shuffling away. A 
wolf has more compassion for the lamb whose 
blood it licks up ; a highwayman more love for 



After Midnight. ji> 

the belated traveller upon whose carcass he 
piles the stone ; the frost more feeling for the 
flower it kills ; the fire more tenderness for the 
tree-branch it consumes ; the storm more pity 
for the ship that it shivers on Long Island 
coast, than a gambler's heart has mercy for his 
victim. 

Deed of darkness unfit for sunlight, or early 
evening hour ! Let it come forth only when 
most of the city lights are out, in the third 
watch of the night ! 

Again, it is after twelve o'clock that drunk- 
enness shows its worst deformity ! At eight or 
nine o'clock the low saloons are not so ghastly. 
At nine o'clock the victims are only talkative. 
At ten o'clock they are much flushed. At 
eleven o'clock their tongue is thick, and their 
hat occasionally falls from the head. At 
twelve they are nauseated and blasphemous, 
and not able to rise. At one they fall to the 
floor, asking for more drink. At two o'clock, 
unconscious and breathing hard. They would 
not fly though the house took fire. Soaked, 
imbruted, dead drunk ! They are strewn all 
over the city, in the drinking saloons, — fathers, 

4 



74 The Abominations. 

brothers, and sons ; men as good as you, 
naturally — perhaps better. 

Not so with the higher circles of intoxication. 
The "gentlemen" coax their fellow-reveller to 
bed, or start with him for home, one at each 
arm, holding him up ; the night air is filled 
with his hooting and cursing. He will be help- 
ed into his own door. He will fall into the 
entry. Hush it up ! Let not the children of 
the house be awakened to hear the shame. 
He is one of the merchant princes. 

But you cannot always hush it up. 

Drink makes men mad. One of its victims 
came home and found that his wife had died 
during his absence ; and he went into the room 
where she had been prepared for the grave, and 
shook her from the shroud, and tossed her body 
out of the window. Where sin is loud and 
loathsome and frenzied, it is hard to keep it 
still. This whole land is soaked with the abom- 
ination. It became so bad in Massachusetts, 
that the State arose in indignation ; and having 
appointed agents for the sale of alcohol for 
mechanical and medicinal purposes, prohibited 
the general traffic under a penalty of five hun- 



After Midnight, 75 

dred dollars. The popular proprietors of the 
Revere, Tremont, and Parker Houses were ar- 
rested. The grog-shops diminished in number 
from six thousand to six hundred. God grant 
that the time may speed on when all the cities 
and States shall rouse up, and put their foot 
upon this abomination. 

As you pass along the streets, night by night, 
you will see the awful need that something rad- 
ical be done. But you do not see the worst. 
That will come to pass long after you are sleep- 
ing — in the third watch of the night. 

Oh ! ye who have been longing for fields of 
work, here they are before you. At the Lon- 
don midnight meetings, thirteen thousand of the 
daughters of sin were reformed ; and uncounted 
numbers of men, who were drunken and de- 
bauched, have been redeemed. If from our 
highest circles a few score of men and women 
would go forth among the wandering and the 
destitute, they might yet make the darkest alley 
of the town kindle with the gladness of heaven. 
Do not go in your warm furs, and from your 
well-laden tables, thinking that pious counsel 
will stop the gnawing of empty stomachs or 



J 6 The Abo?niiiations. 

warm their stockingless feet. Take food and 
medicine, and raiment, as well as a prayer. 
When the city missionary told the destitute 
woman she ought to love God, she said : " Ah ! 
if you were as cold and hungry as I am, you 
could think of nothing else/" 

I am glad to know that not one earnest pray- 
er, not one heartfelt alms-giving, not one kind 
word, ever goes unblessed. Among the moun- 
tains of Switzerland there is a place where, if 
your voice be uttered, there will come back a 
score of echoes. But utter a kind, sympathetic, 
and saving word in the dark places of the town, 
and there will come back ten thousand echoes 
from all the thrones of heaven. 

There may be some one reading this who 
knows by experience of the tragedies enacted 
in the third watch of the night. I am not the 
man to thrust you back with one harsh word. 
Take off the bandage from your soul, and put 
on it the salve of the Saviour's compassion. 
There is rest in God for your tired soul. 
Many have come back from their wanderings. 
I see them coming now. Cry up the news to 
heaven ! Set all the bells a-ringing ! Under 



After Midnight. 77 

the high arch spread the banquet of rejoicing. 
Let all the crowned heads of heaven come in 
and keep the jubilee. I tell you there is more 
joy in heaven over one man who reforms than 
over ninety-and-nine who never got off the 
track. 

But there is a man who will never return 
from his evil ways. How many acts are there 
in a tragedy ? Five, I believe : 

ACT I. — Young man starting from home. 

Parents and sisters weeping to have him go. 

Wagon passing over the hills. Farewell kiss 

thrown back. Ring the bell and let the curtain 

drop. 

ACT II. — Marriage altar. Bright lights. 
Full organ. White veil trailing through the 
aisle. Prayer and congratulation, and excla- 
mations of "How well she looks ! " Ring the 
bell, and let the curtain drop. 

Act III. — Midnight. Woman waiting for 
staggering steps. Old garments stuck into the 
broken window-pane. Many marks of hardship 
on the face. Biting of the nails of bloodless 
fingers. Neglect, cruelty, disgrace. Ring the 
bell, and let the curtain drop. 



78 The Abominations, 

ACT IV. — Three graves in a very dark place. 
Grave of child who died from lack of medicine. 
Grave of wife who died of a broken heart. 
Grave of husband and father who died of dissi- 
pation. Plenty of weeds, but no flowers. O 
what a blasted heath with three graves ! Ring 
the bell y and let the curtain drop. 

Act V. — A destroyed soul's eteimity. No 
light ; no music ; no hope / Despair coiling 
around the heart with unutterable anguish. 
Blackness of darkness forever. 

Woe ! Woe ! Woe ! I cannot bear longer 
to look. I close my eyes at this last act of the 
tragedy. Quick ! Quick ! Ring the bell and 
let the curtain drop. 



THE INDISCRIMINATE DANCE. 

It is the anniversary of Herod's birthday. 
The palace is lighted. The highways leading 
thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited 
guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and 
the mightiest men of the realm are on the way 
to mingle in the festivities. The tables are filled 
with all the luxuries that the royal purveyors 
can gather, — spiced wines, and fruits, and rare 
meats. The guests, white-robed, anointed and 
perfumed, take their places. Music .! The 
jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are pro- 
pounded. Repartees indulged. Toasts drunk. 
The brain befogged. Wit gives place to uproar 
and blasphemy. And yet they are not satisfied. 
Turn on more light. Give us more music. 
Sound the trumpet. Clear the floor for the 
dance. Bring in Salome, the graceful and ac- 
complished princess^ 

The doors are opened and in bounds the 
dancer. Stand back and give plenty 'of room 
for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted. 



80 The Abo7ninations. 

They never saw such poetry of motion. Their 
souls whirl in the reel, and bound with the 
bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and 
throne, — everything but the fascinations of Sa- 
lome. The magnificence of his realm is as 
nothing compared with that which now whirls 
before him on tiptoe. His heart is in transport 
with Salome as her arms are now tossed in the 
air, and now placed akimbo. He sways with 
every motion of the enchantress. He thrills 
with the quick pulsations of her feet, and is be- 
witched with the posturing and attitudes that 
he never saw before, in a moment exchanged 
for others just as amazing. He sits in silence 
before the whirling, bounding, leaping, flashing 
wonder. And when the dance stops, and the 
tinkling cymbals pause, and the long, loud 
plaudits that shook the palace with their thun- 
ders had abated, the entranced monarch swears 
unto the princely performer: ™ Whatsoever 
thou shalt ask of me I will give it to thee, to 
the half of my kingdom." 

Now there was in prison a minister by the 
name of John the Baptist, who had made much 
trouble by his honest preaching. He had de- 



The Indiscriminate Dance. 81 

nounced the sins of the king, and brought down 
upon himself the wrath of the females in the 
royal family. At the instigation of her mother, 
Salome takes advantage of the king's extrava- 
gant promise and demands the head of John 
the Baptist on a dinner-plate. 

There is a sound of heavy feet, and the clat- 
ter of swords outside of the palace. Swing 
back the door. The executioners are returning 
from their awful errand. They hand a platter 
to Salome. What is that on the platter ? A 
new tankard of wine to rekindle the mirth of the 
lords ? No ! It is redder than wine, and cost- 
lier. It is the ghastly, bleeding head of John 
the Baptist ! Its locks dabbled in gore. Its 
eyes set in the death-stare. The distress of the 
last agony in the features. That fascinating 
form, that just now swayed so gracefully in the 
dance, bends over the horrid burden without a 
shudder. She gloats over the blood ; and just 
as the maid of your household goes, bearing 
out on a tray the empty glasses of the evening's 
entertainment, so she carried out on a platter 
the dissevered head of that good man, while all 
the banqueters shouted, and thought it a grand 

4* 



82 The Abominations. 

joke, that, in such a brief and easy way, they 
had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken, 
troublesome minister. 

What could be more innocent than a birthday 
festival ? All the kings from the time of Pha- 
raoh had celebrated such days ; and why not 
Herod ? It was right that the palace should be 
lighted, and that the cymbals should clap, and 
that the royal guests should go to a banquet ; 
but, before the rioting and wassail that closed 
the scene of that day, every pure nature revolts. 

Behold the work, the influence, and the end 
of an infamous dancer ! 

I am, by natural temperament and religious 
theory, utterly opposed to the position of those 
who are horrified at every demonstration of 
mirth and playfulness in social life, and who 
seem to think that everything, decent and im- 
moral, depends upon the style in which people 
carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see 
nothing but ruin, moral and physical, in the 
dissipations of the ball-room, which have de- 
spoiled thousands of young men and women 
of all that gives dignity to character, or useful- 
ness to life. 



The Indiscriminate Dance. 83 

Dancing has been styled " the graceful 
movement of the body adjusted by art, to 
the measures or tune of instruments, or of 
the voice." All nations have danced. The 
ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at first 
taught the practice to the Lacedaemonians ; 
but, whatever be its' origin, all climes have 
adopted it. 

In other days there were festal dances, and 
funeral dances, and military dances, and " me- 
diatorial " dances, and bacchanalian dances. 
Queens and lords have swayed to and fro in 
their gardens ; and the rough men of the back- 
woods in this way have roused up the echo of 
the forest. There seems to be something in 
lively and coherent sounds to evoke the move- 
ment of hand and foot, whether cultured or 
uncultured. Men passing the street unconsci- 
ously keep step to the music of the band ; and 
Christians in church unconsciously find them- 
selves keeping time with their feet, while their 
soul is uplifted by some great harmony. Not 
only is this true in cultured life, but the red 
men of Oregon have their scalp dances, and 
green-corn dances, and war dances. It is, 



84 The Abominations. 

therefore, no abstract question that you ask mt 
— Is it right to dance ? 

The ancient fathers, aroused by the indecent 
dances of those days, gave emphatic evidence 
against any participation in the dance. St. 
Chrysostom says: — "The feet were not given 
for dancing, but to walk modestly ; not to leap 
impudently like camels." 

One of the dogmas of the ancient church 
reads: "A dance is the devil's possession; 
and he that entereth into a dance, entereth 
into his possession. The devil is the gate to 
the middle and to the end of the dance. As 
many passes as a man makes in dancing, so 
many passes doth he make to hell." Else- 
where, these old dogmas declare — "The woman 
that singeth in the dance is the princess of the 
devil ; and those that answer are his clerks ; 
and the beholders are his friends, and the music 
are his bellows, and the fiddlers are the minis- 
ters of the devil ; for, as when hogs are strayed, 
if the hogs'-herd call one, all assemble together, 
so the devil calleth one woman to sing in the 
dance, or to play on some instrument, and pre- 
sently all the dancers gather together." 



T'ke Indiscriminate Dance. 85 

This wholesale and indiscriminate denuncia- 
tion grew out of the utter dissoluteness of those 
ancient plays. So great at one time was the 
offence to all decency, that the Roman Senate 
decreed the expulsion of all dancers and dan- 
cing-masters from Rome. 

Yet we are not to discuss the customs of that 
day, but the customs of the present. We can- 
not let the fathers decide the question for us. 
Our reason, enlightened by the Bible, shall be 
the standard. I am not ready to excommuni- 
cate all those who lift their feet beyond a 
certain height. I would not visit our youth 
with a rigor of criticism that would put out all 
their ardor of soul. I do not believe that all 
the inhabitants of Wales, who used to step to 
the sound of the rustic pibcorn, went down to 
ruin. I would give to all of our youth the 
right to romp and play. God meant it, or he 
would not have surcharged our natures with 
such exuberance. If a mother join hands with 
her children, and while the eldest strikes the 
keys, fill all the house with the sound of agile 
feet, I see no harm. If a few friends, gathered 
in happy circle, conclude to cross and recross 



S6 The Abominations. 

the room to the sound of the piano well played, 
I see no harm. I for a long while tried to see 
in it a harm, but I never could, and I probably 
never will-. I would to God men kept young 
for a greater length of time. Never since my 
school-boy days have I loved so well as now 
the hilarities of life. What if we have felt 
heavy burdens, and suffered a multitude of hard 
knocks, is it any reason why we should stand 
in the path of those who, unstung by life's 
misfortunes, are exhilarated and full of glee? 

God bless the young ! They will have to live 
many a day if they want to hear me say one 
word to dampen their ardor or clip their wings, 
or to throw a cloud upon their life by telling 
them that it is hard, and dark, and doleful. It 
is no such thing. You will meet with many a 
trial ; but, speaking from my own experience, 
let me tell you that you will be treated a great 
deal better than you deserve. 

Let us not grudge to the young their joy. As 
we go further on in life, let us go with the re- 
membrance that we have had our gleeful days. 
When old age frosts our locks, and stiffens our 
limbs, let us not block up the way, but say, 



The Indiscriminate Dance. 87 

" We had our good times : now let others have 
theirs." As our children come on, let us cheer- 
fully give them our places. How glad will I be 
to let them have everything, — my house, my 
books, my place in society, my heritage ! By 
the time we get old we will have had our way 
long enough. Then let our children come on 
and we'll have it their way. For thirty, forty, or 
fifty years, we have been drinking from the cup 
of life ; and we ought not to complain if called 
to pass the cup along and let others take a drink. 
But, while we have a right to the enjoyments 
of life, we never will countenance sinful indul- 
gences. I here set forth a group of what 
might be called the dissipations of the ball-room. 
They swing an awful scythe of death. Are we 
to stand idly by, and let the work go on, lest in 
the rebuke we tread upon the long trail of some 
popular vanity ? The whirlpool of the ball- 
room drags down the life, the beauty, and the 
moral worth of the city. In this whirlwind of 
imported silks goes out the life of many of our 
best families. Bodies and souls innumerable 
are annually consumed in this conflagration of 
ribbons. 



88 The Abominations. 

This style of dissipation is the abettor of 
pride, the instigator of jealousy, the sacrificial 
altar of health, the defiler of the soul, the avenue 
of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread 
of this wild, intoxicating, heated midnight 
dance jars all the moral hearthstones of the city. 
The physical ruin is evident. What will be- 
come of those who work all day and dance all 
night ? A few years will turn them out nervous, 
exhausted imbeciles. Those who have given 
up their midnights to spiced wines, and hot 
suppers, and ride home through winter's cold, 
unwrapped from the elements, will at last be 
recorded suicides. 

There is but a short step from the ball-room 
to the grave-yard. There are consumptions 
and fierce neuralgias close on the track. Amid 
that glittering maze of ball-room splendors, dis- 
eases stand right and left, and balance and 
chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the 
perfume, and the froth of death's lip bubbles up 
in the champagne. 

Many of our brightest homes are being sac- 
rificed. There are families that have actually 
quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that 



The Indiscriminate Dance. 89 

they may give themselves more exclusively to 
the higher duties of the ball-room. Mothers 
and daughters, fathers and sons, finding their 
highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to 
books, to quiet culture, to all the amenities of 
home. The father will, after a while, go down 
into lower dissipations. The son will be tossed 
about in society, a nonentity. The daughter 
will elope with a French dancing-master. The 
mother, still trying to stay in the glitter, and by 
every art attempting to keep the color in her 
cheek, and the wrinkles off her brow, attempt- 
ing, without any success, all the arts of the 
belle, — an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly 
without any wings. 

If anything on the earth is beautiful to my 
eye, it is an aged woman ; her hair floating 
back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but 
white with the blossoms of the tree of life ; her 
voice tender with past memories, and her face 
a benediction. The children pull at grand- 
mother's dress as she passes through the room, 
and almost pull her down in her weakness ; yet 
she has nothing but a cake, or a candy, or a 
kind word for the little darlings. When she 



90 The Abominations. 

goes away from us there is a shadow on the 
table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow in 
the dwelling. 

But if anything on earth is distressful to look 
at, it is an old woman ashamed of being old. 
What with paint and false hair, she is too 
much for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, 
when I see her coming. One of the worst 
looking birds I know of is a peacock after it 
has lost its feathers. I would not give one lock 
of my mother's gray hair for fifty thousand such 
caricatures of old age. The first time you find 
these faithful disciples of the ball-room dili- 
gently engaged and happy in the duties of the 
home circle, send me word, for I would go a 
great way to see such a phenomenon. These 
creatures have no home. Their children un- 
washed. Their furniture undusted. Their 
china closets disordered. The house a scene 
of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness, and dirt. 
'One would think you might discover even amid 
the witcheries of the ball-room the sickening 
odors of the unswept, unventilated, and unclean 
domestic apartments. 

These dissipations extinguish all love of use- 



The Jndiscj'imznate Dance. 91 

fulness. How could you expect one to be 
interested in the alleviations of the world's 
misery, while there is a question to be aecided 
about the size of a glove or the shade of a 
pongee ? How many of these men and women 
of the ball-room visit the poor, or help dress 
the wounds of a returned soldier in the hospital ? 
When did the world ever see a perpetual dancer 
distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in 
upon themselves. And it is very poor pas- 
ture ! 

This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to 
intellect and soul. This constant study of little 
things ; this harassing anxiety about dress ; 
this talk of fashionable infinitesimals ; this shoe- 
pinched, hair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group — 
that simper and look askance at the mirrors and 
wonder, with infinity of interest, "how that 
one geranium leaf does look ; " this shrivelling 
up of man's moral dignity, until it is no more 
observable with the naked eye ; this taking of 
a woman's heart, that God meant should be 
filled with all amenities, and compressing it 
until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and art- 
lessness are squeezed out of it ; this inquisition 



92 The Abominations. 

of a small shoe ; this agony of tight lacing ; 
this wrapping up of mind and heart in a ruffle ; 
this tumbling down of a soul that God meant 
for great upliftings ! 

I prophesy the spiritual ruin of all partici- 
pators in this rivalry. Have the white, pol- 
ished, glistening boards ever been the road to 
heaven ? Who at the flash of those chande- 
liers hath kindled a torch for eternity ? From 
the table spread at the close of that excited and 
besweated scene, who went home to say his 
prayers ? 

To many, alas ! this life is a masquerade ball. 
As, at such entertainments, gentlemen and 
ladies appear in the dress of kings or queens, 
mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close 
of the dance throw off their disguises, so, in 
this dissipated life, all unclean passions move in 
mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. 
The lights sparkle along the wall, or drop from 
the ceiling — a very cohort of fire ! The music 
charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. 
Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed 
hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. 
Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On 



The Indiscriminate Dance. 93 

with the dance ! Flash, and rustle, and laugh- 
ter, and immeasurable merry-making ! But the 
languor of death comes over the limbs, and 
blurs the sight. Lights lower ! Floor hollow 
with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into a 
wail. Lights lower ! The maskers can hardly 
now be seen. Flowers exchange their frag- 
rance for a sickening odor, such as comes from 
garlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. 
Lights lower! Mists fill the room. Glasses 
rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder. 
Sighs seem caught among the curtains. Scarf 
falls from the shoulder of beauty, — a shroud ! 
Lights lower! Over the slippery boards, in 
dance of death, glide jealousies, disappoint- 
ments, lust, despair. Torn leaves and withered 
garlands , only half hide the ulcered feet. The 
stench of smoking lamp-wicks almost quench- 
ed. Choking damps. Chilliness. Feet still 
Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed. 
Lights out ! 



THE MASSACRE BY NEEDLE AND 
SEWING-MACHINE. 

Very long ago the needle was busy. It was 
considered honorable for women to toil in olden 
time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace 
showing garments made by his own mother.. 
The finest tapestries at Bayeux were made by 
the Queen of William the Conqueror. Augus- 
tus the Emperor would not wear any garments 
except those that were fashioned by some 
member of his royal family. So let the toiler 
everywhere be respected ! 

The greatest blessing that could have happen- 
ed to our first parents was being turned out of 
Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and 
Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along 
without work, or only such slight employment 
as a perfect garden, with no weeds in it, de- 
manded. But, as soon as they had sinned, the 
best thing for them was to be turned out where 
they would have to work. We know what a 
withering thing it is for a man to have nothing 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. ' 95 

to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, 
when asked why he kept on working, said, " I 
do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a 
man who has a large amount of money to start 
with has no chance. Of the thousand prosper- 
ous and honorable men that you know, nine 
hundred and ninety-nine had to work vigor- 
ously at the beginning. 

But I am now to tell you that industry is just 
as important for a woman's safety and happi- 
ness. The most unhappy women in our com- 
munities to-day are those who have no engage- 
ments to call them up in the morning ; who, 
once having risen and breakfasted, lounge 
through the dull forenoon in slippers down at 
the heel and with dishevelled hair, reading 
George Sand's last novel; and who, having 
dragged through a wretched forenoon and 
taken their afternoon sleep, and having spent 
an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their 
card-case and go out to make calls ; and who 
pass their evenings waiting for somebody to 
come in and break up the monotony. Arabel- 
la Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a 
dungeon as that. 



g6 The Abominations, 

There is no happiness in an idle woman. It 
may be with hand, it may be with brain, it may 
be with foot ; but work she must, or be wretch- 
ed forever. The little girls of our families must 
be started with that idea. The curse of oui 
American society is that our young women are 
taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, 
sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing 
in their life is to get somebody to take care of 
them. Instead of that, the first lesson should 
be, how, under God, they may take care of 
themselves. The simple fact is that a majority 
of them do have to take care of themselves, and 
that, too, after having, through the false notions 
of their parents, wasted the years in which they 
ought to have learned how successfully to main- 
tain themselves. We now and here declare the 
inhumanity, cruelty, and outrage of that father 
and mother, who pass their daughters into 
womanhood, having given them no facility for 
earning their livelihood. Madame de Stael 
said : " It is not these writings that I am proud 
of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occu- 
pations, in any one of which I could make a 
livelihood." 



Massacre by Needle , Etc. 97 

You say you have a fortune to leave them. 
O man and woman ! have you not learned that, 
like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches 
have wings and fly away ? Though you should 
be successful in leaving a competency behind 
you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in 
a night ; or some elders or deacons of our 
churches may get up an oil company, or some 
sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the 
church, arid induce your orphans to put their 
money into a hole in Venango County ; and if, 
by the most skilful derricks, the sunken money 
cannot be pumped up again, prove to them 
that it was eternally decreed that that was the 
way they were to lose it, and that it went in the 
most orthodox and heavenly style. 

O the damnable schemes that professed 
Christians will engage in — until God puts his 
fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe 
and rips it clear down to the bottom ! 

You have no right, because you are well off, 
to conclude that your children are going to be 
as well off. A man died, leaving a large for- 
tune. His son, a few months ago, fell dead in 
a Philadelphia grog-shop. His old comrades 

5 



98 The Abominations. 

came in and said, as they bent over his corpse : 
"What is the matter with you, Boggsey ? " 
The surgeon standing over him said: "Hush 
up! he is dead!" — "Ah, he is dead!" they 
said. " Come, boys, let us go and take a drink 
in memory of poor Boggsey ! " 

Have you nothing better than money to leave 
your children ? If you have not, but send 
your daughters into the world with empty brain 
and unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassina- 
tion, homicide, regicide, infanticide — compared 
with which that of poor Hester Vaughan was 
innocence. There are women toiling in our 
cities for three and four dollars per week, who 
were the daughters of merchant princes. These 
suffering ones now would be glad to have the 
crumbs that once fell from their father's table. 
That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is 
the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gai- 
ters in which her mother walked ; and that torn 
and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent 
brocade, that swept Broadway clean without 
any expense' to the street commissioners. 
Though you live in an elegant residence, and 
fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 99 

feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to 
work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in soci- 
ety, that though our young women may em- 
broider slippers, and crochet, and make mats 
for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the 
idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dis- 
honorable. It is a shame for a young woman, 
belonging to a large family, to be inefficient 
when the father toils his life away for her sup- 
port. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle 
while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is 
as honorable to sweep house, make beds, or 
trim hats, as it is to twist a watch-chain. 

As far as I can understand, the line of re- 
spectability lies between that which is useful 
and that which is useless. If women do that 
which is of no value, their work is honorable. 
If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. 
That our young women may escape the censure 
of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. 
You may knit a tidy for the back of an arm- 
chair, but by no means make the money where- 
with to buy the chair. You may, with delicate 
brush, beautify a mantel-ornament, but die 
rather than earn enough to buy a marble man- 



ioo The Abominations. 

tel. You may learn artistic music until you 
can squall Italian, but never sing " Ortonville " 
or " Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if 
you would, in the eyes of refined society, pre- 
serve your respectability. 

I scout these finical notions. I tell you a 
woman, no more than a man, has a right to oc- 
cupy a place in this world unless she pays a 
rent for it. 

In the course of a lifetime you consume 
whole harvests, and droves of cattle, and every 
day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good 
pure air. You must, by some kind of useful- 
ness, pay for all this. Our race was the last 
thing created, — the birds and fishes on the 
fourth day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth 
day, and man on the sixth day. If geologists 
are right, the earth was a million of years in the 
possession of the insects, beasts, and birds, be- 
fore our race came upon it. In one sense, we 
were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and 
the hawks had pre-emption right. The question 
is not what we are to do with the lizards and 
summer insects, but what the lizards and sum- 
mer insects are to do with us. 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 101 

If we want a place in this world we must earn 
it. The partridge makes its own nest before it 
occupies it. The lark, by its morning song, 
earns its breakfast before it eats it ; and the Bi- 
ble gives an intimation that the first duty of an 
idler is to starve, when it says if he " will not 
work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the 
health ; and very soon Nature says, "This man 
has refused to pay his rent ; out with him ! " 

Society is to be reconstructed on the subject 
of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who 
would have woman industrious shut her up to a 
few kinds of work. My judgment in this mat- 
ter is, that a woman has a right to do anything 
she can do well. There should be no depart- 
ment of merchandise, mechanism, art, or sci- 
ence barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has 
genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa 
Bonheur has a fondness for delineating animals, 
let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss 
Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount 
the starry ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, 
let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach 
the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly elo- 
quence the Quaker meeting-house. 



102 The Abominations. 

It is said, if woman is given such opportuni- 
ties, she will occupy places that might be taken 
by men. I say, if she have more skill and 
adaptedness for any position than a man has, let 
her have it ! She has as much right to her 
bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men 
have. 

But it is said that her nature is so delicate 
that she is unfitted for exhausting toil. I ask, 
in the name of all past history, what toil on 
earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremen- 
dous than that toil of the needle to which for 
ages she has been subjected ? The battering- 
ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-axe 
have made no such havoc as the needle. I 
would that these living sepulchres in which wo- 
men have for ages been buried might be open- 
ed, and that some resurrection trumpet might 
bring up these living corpses to the fresh air 
and sunlight. 

Go with me, and I will show you a woman 
who, by hardest toil, supports her children, her 
drunken husband, her old father and mother, 
pays her house-rent, always has wholesome 
food on her table, and, when she can get some 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 103 

neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take 
care of her family, appears in church, with hat 
and cloak that are far from indicating the toil to 
which she is subjected. 

Such a woman as that has body and soul 
enough to fit her for any position. She could 
stand beside the majority of your salesmen and 
dispose of more goods. She could go into your 
wheelwright shops and beat one-half of your 
workmen at making carriages. We talk about 
woman as though we had resigned to her all 
the light work, and ourselves had shouldered 
the heavier. But the day of judgment, which 
will reveal the sufferings of the stake and inqui- 
sition, will marshal before the throne of God 
and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of 
wash-tub and needle. 

Now, I say, if there be any preference in oc- 
cupation, let woman have it. God knows her 
trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitive- 
ness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I 
demand that no one hedge up her pathway to 
a livelihood. O the meanness, the despicability 
of men who begrudge a woman the right to 
work anywhere, in any honorable calling ! 



104 The Abominations. 

I go still further, and say that women should 
have equal compensation with men. By what 
principle of justice is it that women in many of 
our cities get only two-thirds as much pay as 
men, and in many cases only half ? Here is the 
gigantic injustice— that for work equally well, 
if not better done, woman receives far less com- 
pensation than man. Start with the National 
Government : women clerks in Washington get 
nine hundred dollars for doing that for which 
men receive eighteen hundred. 

To thousands of young women of New York 
to-day there is only this alternative : starvation 
or dishonor. Many of the largest mercantile 
establishments of our cities are accessory to 
these abominations ; and from their large es- 
tablishments there are scores of souls being 
pitched off into death ; and their employers 
know it / 

Is there a God ? Will there be a judgment ? 
I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's 
wrongs, many of our large establishments will 
be swallowed up quicker than a South-Ameri- 
can earthq lake ever took down a city. God 
will catch these oppressors between the two 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 105 

mill-stones of his wrath, and grind them to 
powder ! 

Why is it that a female principal in a school 
gets only eight hundred and twenty-five dollars 
for doing work for which a male principal gets 
sixteen hundred and fifty ? 

I hear from' all this land the wail of woman- 
hood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail 
but flatteries He says she is an angel. She is 
not. She knows she is not. She is a human 
being, who gets hungry when she has no food, 
and cold when she has no fire. Give her no 
more flatteries : give her justice ! 

There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in 
New York and Brooklyn. Across the darkness 
of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not 
such a cry as comes from those who are sud- 
denly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding, 
horrible wasting away. Gather them before 
you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, 
hunger-struck ! Look at their fingers, needle- 
picked and blood-tipped ! See that premature 
stoop in the shoulders ! Hear that dry, hack- 
ing, merciless cough ! 

At a large meeting of these women, held in a 
5* 



106 The Abominations. 

hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were de- 
livered, but a needle-woman took the stand, 
threw aside her faded shawl, and, with her shriv- 
elled arm, hurled a very thunder-bolt of elo- 
quence, speaking out of the horrors of her own 
experience. 

Stand at the corner of a street in New York 
at half-past five or six o'clock in the morning, as 
the women go to their work. Many of them 
had no breakfast except the crumbs that were 
left over from the night before, or a crust they 
chew on their way through the street. Here 
they come ! the working girls of New York and 
Brooklyn ! These engaged in bead-work, these 
in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar 
making, book-binding, labelling, feather-pick- 
ing, print-coloring, paper-box making, but, 
most overworked of all, and least compensated, 
the sewing-women. Why do they not take the 
city-cars on their way up ? They cannot afford 
the live cents ! If, concluding to deny herself 
something else, she get into the car, give her a 
seat ! You want to see how Latimer and Rid- 
ley appeared in the fire : look at that woman 
and behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 107 

fire, a more agonizing death ! Ask that woman 
how much she gets for her work, and she will 
tell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and 
finds her own thread ! 

Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my 
church, after service, a woman fell in convul- 
sions. The doctor said she needed medicine 
not so much as something to eat. As she be- 
gan to revive in her delirium, she said, gasp- 
ingly : "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight 
cents ! I wish I could get it done ! I am so 
tired ! I wish I could get some sleep, but I 
must get it done ! Eight cents ! Eight cents ! " 
We found afterwards that she was making gar- 
ments for eight cents apiece, and that she could 
make but three of them in a day ! Hear it ! 
Three times eight are twenty-four ! Hear it, 
men and women who have comfortable homes ! 

Some of the worst villains of the city are the 
employers of these women. They beat them 
down to the last penny, and try to cheat them 
out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar 
or two before she gets the garments to work on. 
When the work is done it is sharply inspected, 
the most insignificant flaws picked out, and 



* 



108 The Abominations. 

the wages refused, and sometimes the dollar de- 
posited not given back. The Women's Protec- 
tive Union reports a case where one of these 
poor souls, finding 'a place where she could get 
more wages, resolved to change employers, and 
went to get her pay for work done. The em- 
ployer says : " I hear you are going to leave 
me ? " — " Yes," she said, " and I have come to 
get what you owe me." He made no answer. 
She said: " Are you not going to pay me ? " 
— ■" Yes," he said, " I will pay you ; " and he 
kicked her down the stairs. 

How are these evils to be eradicated ? What 
have you to answer, you who sell coats, and 
have shoes made, and contract for the Southern 
and Western markets ? What help is there, 
what panacea, what redemption ? Some say : 
" Give women the ballot." What effect such 
ballot might have on other questions I am not 
here to discuss ; but what would be the effect 
of female suffrage upon woman's wages ? I do 
not believe that woman will ever get justice by 
woman's ballot. 

Indeed, women oppress women as much as 
men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat 



Massacre by Needle \ Etc. 109 

down to the lowest figure the woman who sews 
for them ? Are not women as sharp as men on 
washerwomen, and milliners, and mantua-mak- 
ers ? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, 
does not her female employer ask her if she will 
not take ninety cents ? You say " only ten cents 
difference ;" but that is sometimes the difference 
between heaven and hell. Women often have 
less commiseration for women than men. If a 
woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man 
may forgive, — -woman never ! Woman will 
never get justice done her from woman's ballot. 

Neither will she get it from man's ballot. 
How, then ? God will rise up for her. God 
has more resources than we know of. The 
flaming sword that hung at Eden's gate when 
woman was driven out will cleave with its terri- 
ble edge her oppressors. 

But there is something for our women to do. 
Let our young people prepare to excel in spheres 
of work, and they will be able, after a while, to 
get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman 
can, in a store, sell more goods in a year than a 
man, she will soon be able not only to ask' but 
to demand more wages, and to demand them 



no The Abominations. 

successfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor 
must take what is given ; skilled and competent 
labor will eventually make its own standard. 
Admitting that the law of supply and demand 
regulates these things, I contend that the de- 
mand for skilled labor is very great, and the 
supply very small. 

Start with the idea that work is honorable, 
and that you can do some one thing better than 
any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you 
will take care of yourself. If you are, after a 
while, called into another relation, you will all 
the better be qualified for it by your spirit of 
self-reliance ; or if you are called to stay as you 
are, you can be happy and self-supporting. 

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, 
and woman the vine that climbs it ; but I have 
seen many a tree fall that not only went down 
itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell 
you of something stronger than an oak for an 
ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the 
great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman 
is strong who leans on God and does her best. 
The needle may break ; the factory-bancf may 
slip ; the wages may fail ; but, over every good 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. in 

woman's head there are spread the two great, 
gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty. 

Many of you will go single-handed through 
life, and you will have to choose between two 
characters. Young woman, I am sure you will 
turn your back upon the useless, giggling, 
painted nonentity which society ignominiously 
acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to 
make you an humble, active, earnest Christian. 

What will become of this godless disciple of 
fashion ? What an insult to her sex ! Her 
manners are an outrage upon decency. She 
is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes 
upon the carpet than how she will look in the 
judgment ; more worried about her freckles than 
her sins ; more interested in her bonnet-strings 
than in her redemption. Her apparel is the 
poorest part of a Christian woman, however 
magnificently dressed, and no one has so much 
right to dress well as a Christian. Not so with 
the godless disciple of fashion. Take her 
robes, and you take everything. Death will 
come down on her some day, and rub the bistre 
off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, 
and with two rough, bony hands, scatter 



112 The Abominations. 

spangles and glass beads and rings and ribbons 
and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes 
and frisettes and golden clasps. 

* 

The dying actress whose life had been 
vicious said: "The scene closes. Draw the 
curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first, 
and the farce afterward ; but in her life it was 
first the farce of a useless life, and then the 
tragedy of a wretched eternity. 

Compare the life and death of such an one 
with that of some Christian aunt that was once 
a blessing to your household. I do not know 
that she was ever offered the hand in marriage. 
She lived single, that untrammelled she might 
be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick 
were to be visited, or the poor to be provided 
with bread, she went with a blessing. She 
could pray, or sing " Rock of Ages," for any 
sick pauper who asked her. As she got older, 
there were days when she was a little sharp, 
but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam — 
just the one for Christmas-eve. She knew 
better than any one else how to fix things. 
Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of 
everybody who had trouble. The brightest 



Massacre by Needle, Etc. 113 

things in all the house dropped from her 
fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the 
grandest notion she ever had was to make you 
happy. She dressed well — Auntie always 
dressed well ; but her highest adornment was 
that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the 
sight of God, is of great price. When she 
died, you all gathered lovingly about her ; and 
as you carried her out to rest, the Sunday- 
school class almost covered the coffin with 
japonicas ; and the poor people stood at the 
end of the alley, with their aprons to their 
eyes, sobbing bitterly ; and the man of the 
world said, with Solomon, " Her price was 
above rubies ; " and Jesus, as unto the maiden 
in Judea, commanded: " I SAY UNTO THEE, 
ARISE ! " 



PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY. 

At my entrance upon this discussion, I must 
deplore the indiscriminate terms of condemna- 
tion employed by many well-meaning persons 
in regard to stock operations. The business of 
the stock-broker is just as legitimate and neces- 
sary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or 
hardware ; and a man may be as pure-minded 
and holy a Christian at the Board of Brokers as 
in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the 
sight of God, as much entitled to his commis- 
sions as any hard-working mechanic is entitled 
to his day's wages. Any man has as much 
right to make money by the going up of stocks 
as by "the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The 
inevitable board-book that the operator carries 
in his hand may be as pure as the clothing 

Note. — This chapter, though largely devoted to " Oil," is 
to be construed as reaching any other "Kite "that the stock 
gambler flies — any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas of 
right and wrong will permit him to work to his own gain and 
others' loss. The oil mania was only a more popular or attrac- 
tive vice of the stock- boards, which is reproduced, in spirit and 
motive, almost every month of the year. 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 115 

merchant's ledger. It is the work of the 
brokers to facilitate business ; to make transfer 
of investment ; to watch and report the tides of 
business ; to assist the merchant in lawful enter- 
prises. 

Because there are men in this department of 
business, sharp, deceitful, and totally iniquitous, 
you have no right to denounce the entire class. 
Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not 
want to be held responsible for the moral 
deficits of their comrades in business. Neither 
have you a right to excoriate those who are 
conscientiously operating through the channels 
spoken of. If they take a risk, so do all busi- 
ness men. The merchant who buys silk at five 
dollars per yard takes his chances ; he expects 
it to go up to six dollars ; it may fall to four 
dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations 
in stocks, meets with disaster and fails, he 
deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold 
spices or calicoes, and through some miscalcu- 
lation is struck down bankrupt. 

We have no right to impose restrictions upon 
this class of men that we impose upon no other. 
What right have you to denounce the operation 



116 The Abominations. 

" buyer — ten days" or " buyer — twenty days," 
when you take a house, " buyer — three hundred 
and sixty-five days ? " Perhaps the entire pay- 
ment is to be made at the end of a year, when 
you do not know but that, by that time, you 
will be penniless. Give all men their due, if 
you would hold beneficent influence over them. 
Do not be too rough in pulling out the weeds, 
lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. 
In the Board of Brokers there are some of the 
most conscientious, upright Christian men of 
our cities — men who would scorn a lie, or a 
subterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these 
boards who might, in some respects, teach a 
lesson of morality to other commercial circles. 

I will not deny that there are special tempta- 
tions connected with this business even when 
carried on legitimately. So there are dangers 
to the engineer on a railroad. He does not 
know what night he may dash into the coal- 
train. But engines must be run, and stocks 
must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought 
to be very slow to undertake either the engine 
or the Stock Exchange. 

A clever yo.ing man, of twenty-five years of 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 117 

age, bought ten shares in the Pennsylvania 
Central Railroad. The stock went up five dol- 
lars per share, and he made fifty dollars by the 
operation. His mother, knowing his tempera- 
ment, said to him, '• I wish you had lost it." 
But, encouraged, he entered another operation, 
and took ten shares in another railroad and 
made two hundred dollars. By this time he 
was ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in 
three years, forty thousand dollars, ruined his 
health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father 
supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate 
has a shingle up, in a small court, among low 
operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this 
commercial sphere. He would have been unfit 
for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for 
any place that demands steady nerve, cool brain, 
and well-balanced temperament. 

But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the 
broker and operator, there are transactions 
every day undertaken in our cities that can only 
be characterized as superb outrage and villany ; 
and there are members of Christian churches 
who have been guilty of speculations that, in 
the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thun- 



1 1 8 The Abominations, 

der them down to everlasting companionship 
with the lowest gamblers that ever pitched 
pennies for a drink. 

It is not necessary that I should draw the dif- 
ficult line between honorable and dishonorable 
speculation. God has drawn it through every 
man's conscience. The broker guilty of "cor- 
nering " as well knows that he is sinning 
against God and man, as though the flame 
of Mount Sinai singed his eyebrows. He hears 
that a brother broker has sold " short," and im- 
mediately goes about with a wise look, saying : 
" Erie is going down — Erie is going down ; 
prepare for it." Immediately the people begin 
to sell ; he buys up the stock ; monopolizes the 
whole affair ; drags down the man who sold 
short ; makes largely, pockets the gain, and 
thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. 
You call it "cornering." I call it gambling, 
theft, highway robbery, villany accursed. 

It is astonishing how some men, who are 
kind in their families, useful in the church, 
charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed 
of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock 
Exchange. A respectable member of one of 



Pictures hi the Stock Gallery. 119 

the churches of the city went into a broker's 
office and said : " Get me one hundred shares 
of Reading, and carry it ; I will leave a margin 
of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up, 
according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every 
few days the operator called to ask the broker 
what success. The stock still declined. The 
operator was so terribly excited that the broker 
asked him what was the matter. He replied : 
"To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five 
hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation 
of what I was sure I was going to get by the 
operation, I made a very large subscription to 
the Missionary Society." 

The nation has become so accustomed to 
frauds that no astonishment is excited thereby. 
The public conscience has for many years been 
utterly debauched by what were called fancy 
stocks, morus multicaulis, Western city enter- 
prises, and New England developments. 

If a man find on his farm something as large 
as the head of a pin, that, in a strong sunlight, 
sparkles a little, a gold company is formed ; 
books are opened ; working capital declared ; 
a select number go in on the " ground floor ; " 



1 2 o The A bom inations. 

and the estates of widows and orphans ai i 
swept into the vortex. Very little discredit 
is connected with any such transaction, if it is 
only on a large scale. We cannot bear small 
and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our 
hats and bow almost to the ground in the pres- 
ence of the man who has made one hundred 
thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman 
was arrested in the streets of one of our cities 
for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She 
was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming 
out of prison, she went into the same business 
and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she 
was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On 
coming out — showing the total depravity of a 
woman's heart — she again went into the same 
business, and sold molasses candy on Sunday. 
Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public 
sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, 
though the heavens fell, no woman should be 
allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet 
the law puts its hands behind its back, and 
walks up and down in the presence of a thou- 
sand abominations and dares not whisper. 

There are scores of men to-day on the streets, 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 121 

whose costly family wardrobes, whose rose- 
wood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose 
stately mansions, are made out of the distresses 
of sewing-women, whose money they gathered 
up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat 
in the golden tankards. There is human blood 
in the crimson plush. There are the bones of 
unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the piano. 
There is the curse of an incensed God hovering 
over all their magnificence. Some night the 
man will not be able to rest. He will rise up 
in bewilderment and look about him, crying : 
" Who is there ? " Those whom he has wrong- 
ed will thrust their skinny arms under the tapes- 
try, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, 
and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, 
crying: " Come to judgment ! " 

For the warning of young men, I shall specify 
but two of the world's most gigantic swindles 
— one English, and the other American. In 
England, in the early part of the last century, 
reports were circulated of the fabulous wealth 
of South America. A company was formed, 
with a stock of what would be equal to thirty 

millions of our dollars. The government gua- 
6 



122 The A bom inatiows. 

ranteed to the company the control of all the 
trade to the South Sea, and the company was 
to assume the entire debt of England, then 
amounting to one hundred and forty millions of 
dollars. Magnificent project ! The English 
nation talked and dreamed of nothing but Peru- 
vian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt 
liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illim- 
itable ! When five million pounds of new stock 
was offered at three hundred pounds per share, 
it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty 
million dollars of the stock was subscribed for, 
when there were but five millions offered. 
South Sea went up, until in the midsummer 
month the stock stood at one thousand per 
cent. The whole nation was intoxicated. 
Around about this scheme, as might have been 
expected, others just as wild arose. A com- 
pany was formed with ten million dollars of 
capital for importing walnut trees from Virginia. 
A company for developing a wheel to go by 
perpetual motion, with a capital of four million 
dollars. A company for developing a new kind 
of soap. A company for insuring against losses 
by servants, with fifteen million dollars capital. 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery, 123 

One scheme was entitled: "A company for 
carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, 
but nobody to know what it is — capital two 
million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares 
of five hundred each. Further information to 
be given in a month." 

The books were opened at nine o'clock in the 
morning. Before night a thousand shares were 
taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So 
successful was the day's work, that that night 
the projector of the enterprise went out of the 
business, and forever vanished from the public. 
But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers 
had their ornamented certificates of stock to 
comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 
speaking of those times, says " that from morn- 
ing until evening 'Change Alley was filled to 
overflowing with one dense mass of living be- 
ings composed of the most incongruous mate- 
rials, and, in all things save the mad pursuit in 
which they were employed, the very opposite 
inhabits and conditions." 

What was the end of this chapter of English 
enterprise ? Suddenly the ruin came. Down 
went the whole nation — members of Parliament, 



124 The Abominations. 

tradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal 
ladies, and poor needle-women — in one stupen- 
dous calamity. The whole earth, and all the 
ages, heard that bubble burst. 

But I am not through. Our young men shall 
hear more startling things. We surpass Eng- 
land in having higher mountains, deeper rivers, 
greater cataracts, and larger armies. Yea, we 
have surpassed it in magnitude of swindles. I 
wish to unfold before the young men of the 
country, and before those in whose hands may 
now be the price of blood, the wide-spread, 
ghastly, and almost infinitely greater wicked- 
ness of the gamblers in oil stock. Now, the 
obtaining of lands, the transporting of machi- 
nery, and the forming of companies for the pro- 
duction of oil, is just as honorable as any 
organization for the obtaining of coal, iron, 
copper, or zinc. God poured out before 
this nation a river of oil, and intended us to 
gather it up, transport it, and use it ; and 
there were companies formed that have with- 
stood all commercial changes, and continued, 
year after year, in the prosecution of an honor- 
able business. I have just as much respect for 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 125 

the man who has made fifty thousand dollars by 
oil as I have for him who has made it by spices. 
Out of twelve hundred petroleum companies, 
how many do you suppose were honestly formed 
and rightfully conducted ? Do you say six 
hundred ? You make large demands upon 
one's credulity ; but let us be generous, and 
suppose that six hundred companies bought 
land, issued honest circulars, sent out machinery, 
and plunged into the earth for the rightful de- 
velopment of resources. To form the other six 
hundred companies, <only three or four things 
were necessary : First, an attractive circular, 
regardless of expense. It must have all the 
colors and hues of earth, and sea, and heaven. 
Let the letters flame with all the beauty of gold, 
and jasper, and amethyst. It must state the 
date of incorporation, and the fact that "all sub- 
scribers shall get the benefit of the original 
undertaking. While it does not make so much 
pretension as some other companies, it must be 
distinctly announced that this is a safe and per- 
manent investment." The circular must state 
that ■; there are a goodly number of flowing 
wells, and others which the company are happy 



126 The Abominations. 

to say have a very good smell of oil." " The 
books will be open only five days, as there are 
only a few shares yet to be taken." Connected 
with this circular is an elaborate map, drawn 
by the artist of the company. Never mind the 
geography of the country. Our map must have 
a creek running through it, so crooked as to 
traverse as much of the land as possible, and 
make it all water-front. "Ah!" said one man 
to his artist, "you make only one creek." 
< — " Well," said the artist, " if you want three 
creeks you c n have them at very little expense. 
There — you have them now — three creeks ! ' 

Then the circular must have good names 
attached to it. How to get them ? The presi- 
dent and directors must be prominent men. If 
celebrated for piety, all the better. The esti- 
mable man approached says : "I know nothing 
about this company." — "Well," says the com- 
mittee waiting on him, "we will give you five 
hundred dollars' worth of shares." Immediately 
the estimable man begins to "know about it," 
and accepts the position of president. Three 
or four directors are obtained in the same way. 
Now the thing is easy. After this you can get 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 127 

anybody. Ordinary Christians and sinners feel 
it a joy to be in such celebrated society. 

Another thing important is that the company 
purchase three or four vials of oil to stand in. 
the window — some in the crude state, the rest 
clarified. Genuine 9 specimens from Venango 
County. 

Another important thing : there must be a 
large working capital, for the company do not 
mean to be idle. They have derricks already 
building ; and there will be large monthly divi- 
dends. Let it be known that there were com- 
panies in some cities who, claiming to have a 
capital of four hundred thousand dollars, yet had 
that capital exhausted when they had sunk one 
well costing five thousand dollars. But never 
mind. The thing must be right, for some of 
the directors are eminent for respectability. 
You say it is certainly important that there be 
some land out of which the oil is to be obtained. 
Oh ! no. Why be troubled with any land at 
all ? It is an expense for nothing. You have 
the circular, and the glowing map, with the 
creeks and three vials of oil in the window, and 
a flaming advertisement in the newspapers. 



128 The Abominations, 

Now let the books be opened ! Better if you 
can have a half-dozen offices in one room ; then 
the agent can accommodate you with anything 
you desire. If you want to take a ''flyer" in 
this and a " flyer" in that, you shall have it. 

Coming in from the country are farmers, 
dairymen, day-laborers. Great chances now for 
speedy emoluments. Pour in the hard-earned 
treasures. Sure enough, a dividend of one per 
cent, per month ! Forthwith, another multitude 
are convinced of the safety of the investment. 
The second month another dividend. The 
third month another. Whence do these divi- 
dends come ? From the product of the wells ? 
Oh ! no. It is your own money they are pay- 
ing -you back. How generous of this company 
to give you five dollars back, when you might 
have lost it all ! 

But the dividends stop. What is the matter? 
Instead of the advertisement which covered a 
whole column of the newspapers, there comes a 
modest little notice that " a special meeting of 
the stockholders will be held for the purpose 
of transacting business of importance." Per-, 
haps it may be to assess the stockholders for 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 129 

the purpose of keeping the little land they 
have, if they have any. Or it may be for the 
election of a new group of officers, for the pre- 
sent incumbents do not want to be always 
before the public. They are modest men. 
They believe in rotation of office. They cannot 
consent any longer to serve. Where have they 
gone to ? They are busy putting up a princely 
mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or 
Chelsea. They have served their day and gen- 
eration, and have gone to their flocks and herds. 
Where is the Church of God, that she allows 
in her membership such gigantic abominations ? 
Were the thirty pieces of silver that Judas re- 
ceived denounced as unfit, and shall the Church 
of God have nothing to say about this price of 
blood ? Is sin to be excused because it is as 
high as heaven, or deep as hell ? The man 
who allows his name to be used as president or 
director in connection with an enterprise that 
he knows is to result in the sale of twenty 
thousand shares of an undeveloped nothing — 
God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and 
in the last day show liim to all the universe — a 
brazen-faced gambler. His house will be ac- 



130 The Abominations. 

cursed. God's anathemas will flash in the 
chandelier, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his 
silver-bitted grays ; and the day of fire will see 
him willing to leap into a burning oil-well to 
hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The 
hundred thousand dollars gotten in unrighteous- 
ness will not be enough to build a barricade 
against the advance of the divine judgments. 

Think of the elder in a church who, from the 
oil regions, sends an exciting telegram, so that 
one man buys a large amount of stock at 
twelve, on Wednesday. The next day it is put 
on the stock-board at six. The enterprising 
man, who sold it at twelve, goes out to buy one 
of the grandest estates within ten miles of the 
city. The man who bought it goes into the 
dust ; and the secret gets out that the exciting 
telegram sent by the elder arose, not from any 
oil actually discovered, but because in boring" 
they had found a magnificent odor of oil. 

If he who steals a dollar from a money-drawer 
is a thief, then he who by dishonesty gets five 
hundred thousand dollars is five hundred thou- 
sand times more a thief. And so the last dav 

4 

will declare him. 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 131 

Did not the law right the injured man ? No ! 
The poor who were wronged would not under- 
take a suit against a company that could bring 
fifty thousand dollars to the enlightenment of 
judge, jury, and lawyer ; while, on the other 
hand, the affluent who had been gouged would 
not go to the courts for justice. Why ! how 
would it sound, if it got out, that Mr. So and 
So, one of the first merchants on Wall, or 
Third, or State street, had got swindled ? They 
will keep it still. 

The guilty range to-day undisturbed through 
society, and will continue to do so until 
the Lord God shall bring them to an unerring 
settlement, and proclaim to an astonished uni- 
verse how many lies they told about the land, 
about the derricks, about the yield, about the 
dividends. What shall such an one say, when 
God shall, in the great day of account, hold up 
before him the circular, and the map, and the 
newspaper advertisement ? Speechless ! 

Before that day shall come I warn you — Dis- 
gorge ! you infamous stock gamblers! Gather 
together so many of your company as have any 
honesty left, and join in the following circular : — 



132 The Abominations. 

" We the undersigned ', do hereby repent of our 
villanies, and beg pardon of the public for all 
the wrongs that we have done them ; and hereby 
ask the widows and orpJians whom we have 
made penniless to come next Saturday, between 
ten and three 'clock, and receive back what we 
stole from them. We hereby confess that the 
wells spoken of in our circular never yielded any 
oil ; and that the creeks running through our orna- 
mented map were an entire fiction ; and that the 
elder who piously rolled up his^ eyes and said it 
was a safe investment, was not as devout as 
he looked to be. Signed by the subscribers at 
their office, in the year of our Lord 1871." 

Then your conscience will be clear, and you 
can die in peace. But I have no faith in such a 
reformation. When the devil gets such a fair 
hold of a man he hardly ever lets go. 

To the young I turn and utter a word of 
warning. While you are determined to be 
acute business men, resolve at the very thresh- 
old that you will have nothing to do with 
stock-gambling. This country can richly afford 
to lose the eight hundred millions of dollars 
swindled out of honest people, if our young 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 133 

men, by it, will be warned for all the future. 
Think you such enterprises are forever passed 
away ? No ! they begin already to clamor for 
public attention and patronage. There are 
now hundreds of printing-presses busy in mak- 
ing pamphlets and circulars for schemes as 
hollow and nefarious as those I have mentioned. 
There are silver-mining companies, founded 
upon nobody knows what — to accomplish what, 
nobody cares. There will be other Canada 
gold companies ; there will be other copper- 
mining companies ; there will be more mutual 
consumers' coal companies, who, not satisfied 
with the price of ordinary coal-dealers, will 
resolve themselves into consumers' associa- 
tions, where the thing consumed is not the 
coal, but themselves— the companies that were 
to be immaculate, setting the whole commu- 
nity to playing the game of "Who's got the 
money ? " 

Stand off from all doubtful enterprises ! 
Resolve that if, in a lawful way, you can- 
not earn a living, then you will die an 
honest man, and be buried in an honest 
sepulchre. 



134 The A bom {nations. 

There are two or three reasons why you 
should have nothing to do with such operations. 
Mentioning the lowest motive first, it will deso- 
late you financially. I asked a man of large 
observation and undoubted integrity, how many 
of the professed stock-gamblers made a perma- 
nent fortune. He answered, " Not one ! not 
one of those who made this their only business." 
For a little while you may plunge in a round of 
seeming prosperity ; but your money is put into 
a bag with holes. You cannot successfully bury 
a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into 
the very heart of the earth ; you may heave 
rocks upon the top of it ; on top of the rocks 
you may put banks and all moneyed institu- 
tions, but that dishonest dollar beneath will 
begin to heave and toss and upturn itself, and 
keep on until it comes to the resurrection of 
damnation. 

Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly 
unhappy. It makes the nerves shake, and the 
brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life dis- 
quieted. 

A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an 
exception to the rule — that such men do not 



Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 135 

permanently prosper — who has well on towards 
a million of dollars, and is nearly seventy 
years of age, may be seen, every day, going 
in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an 
inquisition of stocks, rode by a nightmare of 
stocks ; and, with the earnestness of a drown- 
ing man, he rushes into a broker's shop, cry- 
ing out: " Did you get me those shares?" 
In such an anxious, exciting life there are 
griefs, disappointments, anguish, but there is 
no happiness. 

Worse than all, it destroys the soul. The 
day must come when the worthless scrip will 
fall out of the clutches of the stock-gambler. 
Satan will play upon him the "cornering" 
game which, down on Wall street, he played 
upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be 
glad to exchange all his interest in Venango 
County for one share in the Christian's prospect 
of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his last 
sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless 
talk about ■•' percentages " and " commissions " 
and " buyer, sixty days," and " stocks up," 
and M stocks down." He thinks that the physi- 
cian who feels his pulse is trying to steal his 



136 The Abominations. 

** board book." He starts up at midnight, 
saying: "One thousand shares of Reading at 
i\6\. Take it ! " Falls back dead. No more 
dividends. Szvindled out of heaven. STOCKS 
down! 



LEPROUS NEWSPAPERS. 

The newspaper is the great educator of the 
nineteenth century. There is no force com- 
pared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, 
forum, all in one. And there is not an interest 
— religious, literary, commercial, scientific, agri- 
cultural, or mechanical — that is not within its 
grasp. All our churches, and schools, and col- 
leges, and asylums, and art-galleries feel the 
quaking of the printing-press. I shall try to 
bring to your parlor-tables the periodicals that 
are worthy of the Christian fireside, and try to 
pitch into the gutter of scorn and contempt 
those newspapers that are not fit for the hand of 
your child or the vision of your wife. 

The institution of newspapers arose in Italy. 
In Venice the first newspaper was published, 
and monthly, during the time that Venice was 
warring against Solyman the Second in Dalma- 
tia. It was printed for the purpose of giving 
military and commercial information to the 
Venetians. The first newspaper published in 



138 The Abominations. 

England was in 1588, and called the English 
Mercury. Others were styled the Weekly Dis- 
coverer, the Secret Owl, Heraclitus Ridens, etc. 

Who can estimate the political, scientific, 
commercial, and religious revolutions roused up 
in England for many years past by Bell's Week- 
ly Dispatch, the Standard, the Morning Chron- 
icle, the Post, and the London Times ? 

The first attempt at this institution in France 
was in 163 1, by a physician, who published the 
News, for the amusement and health of his pa- 
tients. The French nation understood fully 
how to appreciate this power. Napoleon, with 
his own hand, wrote articles for the press, and 
so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 
journals. But in the United States the news- 
paper has come to unlimited sway. Though in 
1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole 
country, the number of published journals is 
now counted by thousands ; and to-day — we 
may as well acknowledge it as not — the reli- 
gious and secular newspapers are the great edu- 
cators of the country. 

In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or 
thousands of people ; the newspaper addresses 



Leprous Newspapers. 139 

an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, 
or two hundred thousand. We preach three or 
four times a week ; they every morning or even- 
ing of the year. If they are right, they are 
gloriously right ; if they are wrong, they are 
awfully wrong. 

I find no difficulty in accounting for the 
world's advance. Four centuries ago, in Ger- 
many, in courts of justice, men fought with 
their fists to see who should have the decision 
of the court ; and if the judge's decision was un- 
satisfactory, then the judge fought with the 
counsel. Many of the lords could not read the 
deeds of their own estates. What has made the 
change ? 

" Books," you say. 

No, sir ! The vast majority of citizens do not 
read books. Take this audience, or any other 
promiscuous assemblage, and how many histo- 
ries have they read? How many treatises on 
constitutional law, or political economy, or 
works of science ? How many elaborate poems 
or books of travel ? How much of Boyle, or 
De Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus, or 
Percival ? Not many ! 



140 The Abominations. 

In the United States, the people would not 
average one such book a year for each in- 
dividual ! 

Whence, then, this intelligence — -this capacity 
to talk about all themes, secular and religious — 
this acquaintance with science and art — this 
power to appreciate the beautiful and grand ? 
Next to the Bible, the newspaper, — swift- wing- 
ed, and everywhere present, flying over the 
fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the 
counting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawk- 
ed through the cars ! All read it : white and 
black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, 
American, old and young, good and bad, sick 
and well, before breakfast and after tea, Mon- 
day morning, Saturday night, Sunday and 
week day ! 

I now declare that I consider the newspaper 
to be the grand agency by which the Gospel is 
to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression 
dethroned, crime extirpated, the world raised, 
heaven rejoiced, and God glorified. 

In the clanking of the printing-press, as the 
sheets fly out, I hear the voice of the Lord Al- 
mighty proclaiming to all the dead nations of 



Leprous Newspapers, 141 

the earth, — "Lazarus, come forth!" And to 
the retreating surges of darkness, — u Let there 
be light ! " In many of our city newspapers, 
professing no more than secular information, 
there have appeared during the past ten years 
some of the grandest appeals in behalf of reli- 
gion, and some of the most effective interpreta- 
tions of God's government among the nations. 

That man has a shrivelled heart who be- 
grudges the five pennies he pays to the news- 
boy who brings the world to his feet. There 
are to-day connected with the editorial and re- 
portorial corps of newspaper establishments men 
of the highest culture and most unimpeachable 
morality, who are living on the most limited 
stipends, martyrs to the work to which they feel 
themselves called. While you sleep in the mid- 
night hours, their pens fly, and their brains ache 
in preparing the morning intelligence. Many 
of them go, unrested and unappreciated, their 
cheeks blanched and their eyes half quenched 
with midnight work, toward premature graves, 
to have the " proof-sheet " of their life correct- 
ed by Divine mercy, glad at last to escape the 
perpetual annoyances of a fault-finding public, 



142 The Abominations. 

and the restless, impatient cry for "more 
copy." 

" Nations are to be born in a day." Will this 
great inrush come from personal presence of 
missionary or philanthropist ? No. When the 
time comes for that grand demonstration I think 
the press in ail the earth will make the an- 
nouncement, and give the call to the nations. 
As at some telegraphic centre, an operator will 
send the messages, north and south, and east 
and west, San Francisco and Heart's Content 
catching the flash at the same instant ; so, 
standing at some centre to which shall reach all 
the electric wires that cross the continent and 
undergird the sea, some one shall, with the 
forefinger of the right hand, click the instru- 
ment that shall thrill through all lands, across 
all islands, under all seas, through all palaces, 
into all dungeons, and startle both hemispheres 
with the news, that in a few moments shall rush 
out from the ten thousand times ten thousand 
printing-presses of the earth: "Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
toward men!" 

You see, therefore, that, in the plain words 



Leprous- Newspapers. 143 

to be written, I have no grudges to gratify 
against the newspaper press. Professional men 
are accustomed to complain of injustice done 
them, but I take the censure I have sometimes 
received and place it on one side the scales, and 
the excessive praise, and place it on the other 
side, and they balance, and so I consider I 
have had simple justice. But we are all aware 
that there is a class of men in towns and cities 
who send forth a baleful influence from their 
editorial pens. There are enough bad news- 
papers weekly poured out into the homes of 
our country to poison a vast population. In 
addition to the home manufacture of iniquitous 
sheets, the mail-bags of other cities come in 
gorged with abominations. New York scoops 
up from the sewers of other cities, and adds to 
its own newspaper filth. And to-night, lying 
on the tables of this city, or laid away on the 
shelf, or in the trunk, for more private perusal, 
are papers the mere mention of the names of 
which would send a blush to the cheek, and 
make the decent and Christian world cry out : 
11 God save the city ! " 
There is a paper published in Boston of out- 



144 The Abominations. 

rageous character, and yet there are seven 
thousand copies of that paper coming weekly 
to New York for circulation. I will not men- 
tion the name, lest some of you should go 
right away and get it. It is wonderful how 
quick the fingers of the printer-boy fly, but the 
fingers of sin and pollution can set up fifty 
thousand types in an instant. The supply of 
bad newspapers in New York does not meet 
the insatiable appetite of our people for refuse, 
and garbage, and moral swill. We must, there- 
fore, import corrupt weeklies published, else- 
where, that make our newspaper stands groan 
under the burden. 

But we need not go abroad. There are 
papers in New York that long ago came to 
perfection of shamelessness, and there is no 
more power in venom and mud and slime to 
pollute them. They have dashed their ini- 
quities into the face of everything decent and 
holy. And their work will be seen in the crime 
and debauchery and the hell of innumerable 
victims. Their columns are not long and 
broad enough to record the tragedies of their 
horrible undoing of immortal men and women. 



Leprous Newspapers. 145 

God, after awhile, will hold up these reeking, 
stenchful, accursed sheets, upon which they 
spread out their guilt, and the whole universe 
will cry out for their damnation. See the work 
of bad newspapers in the false tidings they 
bring ! There are hundreds of men to-day 
penniless, who were, during the war, hurled 
from their affluent positions by incorrect ac 
counts of battles that shook the money-market, 
and the gold gamblers, with their hoofs, 
trampled these honest men into the mire. *And 
many a window was hoisted at the hour of 
midnight as the boy shouted: "Extra! 
Extra ! " And the father and mother who had 
an only son at the front, with trembling hand, 
and blanched cheek, and sinking heart, read of 
battles that had never occurred. God pity the 
father and mother who have a boy at the front 
when evil tidings come ! If an individual 
makes a false statement, one or twenty persons 
may be damaged ; but a newspaper of large 
circulation that wilfully makes a misstatement 
in one day tells fifty thousand falsehoods. 

The most stupendous of all lies is a news- 
paper lie. 

7 



146 The Abominations. 

A bad newspaper scruples not at any slander. 
It may be that, to escape the grip of the law, 
the paragraphs will be nicely worded, so that 
the suspicion is thrown out and the damage 
done without any exposure to the law. Year 
by year, thousands of men are crushed by the 
ink-roller. An unscrupulous man in the 
editorial chair may smite as with the wing of a 
destroying angel. What to him is commercial 
integrity, or professional reputation, or woman's 
honor, or home's sanctity ? It seems as if he 
held in his hand a hose with which, while all the 
harpies of sin were working at the pumps, he 
splashed the waters of death upon the best 
interests of society. 

The express-train in England halts not to 
take in water, but between the tracks there is a 
trough, one-fourth of a mile in length, filled 
with water ; and the engine drops a hose that 
catches up the water while the train flies. So 
with bad newspapers that fly along the track of 
death without pausing a moment, yet scooping 
up into themselves the pollution of society, 
and in the awful rush making the earth tremble. 

The most abandoned man of the city may go 



Leprous Newspapers. 147 

to the bad newspaper and get a slander inserted 
about the best man. If he cannot do it in any 
other way, he can by means of an anonymous 
communication. Now, a man who, to injure 
another, will write an anonymous letter, is, in 
the first place, a coward, and, in the second 
place, a villain. Many of these offensive 
anonymous letters you see in the bad news- 
paper have been found to be written in the 
editorial chair. 

The bad newspaper stops not at any political 
outrage. It would arouse a revolution, and 
empty the hearts of a million brave men in the 
trenches, rather than not have its own circula- 
tion multiply. What to it are the hard-earned 
laurels of the soldier or the exalted reputation 
of the statesman ? Its editors would, if they 
dared, blow up the Capitol of the nation if they 
could only successfully carry off the frieze of 
one of the corridors. There are enough false- 
hoods told at any one of our autumnal elections 
to make the '■ Father of Lies ■' disown his mon- 
strous progeny. Now it is the Mayor, then 
the Governor, now the Secretary of State, and 
then the President, until the air is so full of 



148 The Abominations. 

misrepresentation that truth is hidden from the 
view, as beautiful landscapes by the clouds of 
summer insects blown up from the marshes. 

The immoral newspaper stops not at the 
unclean advertisement. It is so much for so 
many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no 
more to advertise the most impure book than 
the new edition of Pilgrim's Progress. A book 
such as no decent man would touch was a few 
months ago advertised in a New York paper, 
and the getter-up of the book, passing down 
one of our streets the other day, acknowledged 
to one of my friends that he had made $18,000 
out of the enterprise. 

In one column of a paper we see a grand 
ethical discussion, and in another the droppings 
of most accursed nastiness. Oh ! you cannot 
by all your religion, in one column, atone for 
one of your abominations in another ! I am 
rejoiced that some of our papers have addressed 
those who have proposed to compensate them 
for bad use of their columns, in the words of 
Peter to Simon Magus : " Thy money perish 
with thee ! " But I arraign the newspapers that 
give their columns to corrupt advertising for 



Leprous Newspapers, 149 

the nefarious work they are doing. The most 
polluted plays that ever oozed from the poison- 
ous pen of leprous dramatist have won their 
deathful power through the medium of news- 
papers ; the evil is stupendous ! 

O ye reckless souls ! get money — though 
morality dies, and society is dishonored, and 
God defied, and the doom of the destroyed 
opens before you — get money ! Though the 
melted gold be poured upon your* naked, blis- 
tered, and consuming soul — get money ! Get 
money ! It will do you good when it begins to 
eat like a canker ! It will solace the pillow of 
death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized 
eternity ! Though in the game thou dost stake 
thy soul, and lose it forever — get money ! 

The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault 
Christianity ana its disciples. With what ex- 
hilaration it puts in capitals, that fill one-fourth 
of a column, the defalcation of some agent of a 
benevolent society ! There is enough meat in 
such a carcass of reputation to gorge all the 
carrion-crows of an iniquitous printing-press. 
They put upon the back of the Church all the 
inconsistencies of hypocrites — as though a bank- 



150 The Abominations. 

er were responsible for all the counterfeits upon 
his institution ! They jeer at religion, and lift 
up their voices until all the caverns of the lost 
resound with the howl of their derision. They 
forget that Christianity is the only hope for the 
world, and that, but for its enlightenment, they 
would now be like the Hottentots, living in 
mud hovels, or like the Chinese, eating rats. 

What would you think of a wretch who, 
during a great storm, while the ship was being 
tossed to and fro on the angry waves, should 
climb up into the light-house and blow out the 
light ? And what do you think of these men, 
who, while all the Christian and the glorious 
institutions of the world are being tossed and 
driven hither and thither, are trying to climb 
up and put out the only light of a lost world ? 

The bad newspaper stops not at publishing 
the most damaging and unclean story. The 
only question is : " Will it pay ? " And there 
are scores of men who, day by day, bring into 
the newspaper offices manuscripts for publica- 
tion which unite all that is pernicious ; and, 
before the ink is fairly dry, tens of thousands 
are devouring with avidity the impure issue. 



Leprous Newspapers. 151 

Their sensibilities deadened, their sense of right 
perverted, their purity of thought tarnished, 
their taste for plain life despoiled — the printing- 
press, with its iron foot, hath dashed their life 
out ! While I speak, there are many people, 
with feet on the ottoman, and the gas turned 
on, looking down on the page, submerged, 
mind and soul, in the perusal of this God-for- 
saken periodical literature ; and the last Chris- 
tian mother will have put the hands of the little 
child under the coverlet for the night, before 
they will rouse up, as the city clock strikes the 
hour of midnight, to go death-struck to their 
prayerless pillows. 

One of the proprietors of a great paper in 
this country gave his advice to a young man 
then about to start a paper: " If you want to 
succeed," said he, "make your paper trashy, 
intensely trashy, — make it all trash ! " 

Brilliant advice to a young man just entering 
business ! 

It is very often that, as a paper purifies itself, 
its circulation decreases, and sometimes when a 
paper becomes positively religious, it becomes 
bankrupt, unless some benevolent and Christian 



152 The Abominations. 

men come up to sustain it by contributions of 
money and means. But few religious news- 
papers in this country are self-supporting. 
The reason urged is — the country cannot 
stand so much religion ! Hear it ! Christian 
men and philanthropists ! 

Many papers that are most rapidly increasing 
to-day are unscrupulous. The facts are mo- 
mentous and appalling. And I put young 
men and women and Christian parents and 
guardians on the look-out. This stuff cannot be 
handled without pollution. Away with it from 
parlor, and shop, and store ! There is so much 
newspaper literature that is pure, and cheap, 
and elegant ; shove back this leprosy from your 
door. 

Mark it well : a man is no better than the 
newspaper he habitually reads. 

You may think it a bold thing thus to arraign 
an unprincipled printing-press, but I know there 
are those reading this who will take my counsel ; 
and, in the discharge of my duty to God and 
man, I defy all the hostilities of earth and hell ! 

Representatives of the secular and religious 
press ! I thank you, in the name of Christianity 



Leprous Nezvspapers. 153 

and civilization, for the enlightenment of igno- 
rance, the overthrow of iniquity, and the words 
you have uttered in the cause of God and your 
country. But I charge you in the name of God, 
before whom you must account for the tremen- 
dous influence you hold in this country, to con- 
secrate yourselves to higher endeavors. You 
are the men to fight back this invasion of cor- 
rupt literature. Lift up your right hand and 
swear new allegiance to the cause of philanthro- 
py and religion. And when, at last, standing 
on the plains of judgment, you look out upon 
the unnumbered throngs over whom you have 
had influence, may it be found that you were 
among the mightiest energies that lifted men 
upon the exalted pathway that leads to the re- 
nown of heaven. Better than to have sat in 
editorial chair, from which, with the finger of 
type, you decided the destinies of empires, but 
decided them wrong, that you had been some 
dungeoned exile, who, by the light of window 
iron-grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf, 
picked up from the hearth, spelled out the story 
of Him who taketh awav the sins of the world. 
In Eternity, Dives is the Beggar ! 



THE FATAL TEN-STRIKE. 

WHILE among my readers are those who have 
passed on into the afternoon of life, and the 
shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons 
with the glow of the setting sun, a large number 
of them are in early life, and the morning is 
coming down out of the clear sky upon them, 
and the bright air is redolent with spring blos- 
soms, and the stream of life, gleaming and 
glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, 
making music as it goes. Some of you are en- 
gaged in mercantile establishments, as clerks 
and book-keepers ; and your whole life is to be 
passed in the exciting world of traffic. The 
sound of busy life stirs you as the drum stirs 
the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechan- 
ical arts, to hammer and chisel your way 
through life ; and success awaits you. Some are 
preparing for professional life, and grand op- 
portunities are before you ; nay, some of you 
already have buckled on the armor. 

But, whatever your age or calling, the sub- 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 155 

ject of gambling, about which I speak in this 
chapter, is pertinent. 

Some years ago, when an association for the 
suppression of gambling was organized, an 
agent of the association came to a prominent 
citizen and asked him to patronize the society. 
He said, " No, I can have no interest in such 
an organization. I am in no wise affected by 
that evil." . 

At that very time his son, who was his part- 
ner in business, was one of the heaviest players 
in "Heme's" famous gaming establishment. 
Another refused his patronage on the same 
ground, not knowing that his first book-keeper, 
though receiving a salary of only a thousand 
dollars, was losing from fifty to one hundred 
dollars per night. The president of a railroad 
company refused to patronize the institution, 
saying — "That society is good for the defence 
of merchants, but we railroad people are not in- 
jured by this evil ; " not knowing that, at that 
very time, two of his conductors were spending 
three nights of each week at faro tables in New 
York. Directly or indirectly, this evil strikes 
at the whole world. 



i5<5 



The Abominations. 



Gambling is the risking of something more or 
less valuable in the hope of winning more than 
you hazard. The instruments of gaming may 
differ, but the principle is the same. The shuf- 
fling and dealing of cards, however full of 
temptation is not gambling, unless stakes are 
put up ; while, on the other hand, gambling 
may be carried on without cards, or dice, or 
billiards, or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets 
on horses, on elections, on battles — the man 
who deals in "fancy" stocks, or conducts a 
business which extra hazards capital, or goes 
into transactions without foundation, but de- 
pendent upon what men call "luck," is a 
gambler. 

It is estimated that one-fourth of the business 
in London is done dishonestly. Whatever you 
expect to get from your neighbor without offer- 
ing an equivalent in money or time or skill, is 
either the product of theft or gaming. Lottery 
tickets and lottery policies come into the same 
category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, 
schools and churches, conducted on the raffling 
system, come under the same denomination. 
Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 157 

with any instrument, or game, or time, or place, 
or think the principle depends upon whether 
you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred 
shares in Camden and Amboy. Whether you 
employ faro or billiards, rondo and keno, cards, 
or bagatelle, the very idea of the thing is 
dishonest ; for it professes to bestow upon you 
a good for which you give no equivalent. 

This crime is no newborn sprite, but a haggard 
transgression that comes staggering down under 
a mantle of curses through many centuries. 
All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been 
addicted to it. Before 1838, the French gov- 
ernment received revenue from gaming houses. 
In 1567, England, for the improvement of her 
harbors, instituted a lottery, to be held at the 
front door of St. Paul's Cathedral. Four hun- 
dred thousand tickets were sold, at ten shillings 
each. The British Museum' and Westminster 
Bridge were partially built by similar proce- 
dures. The ancient Germans would sometimes 
put up themselves and families as prizes, and 
suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger 
than the persons who won them, 

But now the laws of the whole civilized world 



158 The Abominations. 

denounce the system. Enactments have been 
passed, but only partially enforced. The men 
interested in gaming houses wield such influence, 
by their numbers and affluence, that the judge, 
the jury, and the police officer must be bold 
indeed who would array themselves against 
these infamous establishments. Within ten 
years the House of Commons of England has 
adjourned on " Derby Day" to go out to bet 
on the races ; and in the best circles of society 
in this country to-day are many hundreds of 
professedly respectable men who are acknowl- 
edged gamblers. 

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land 
are every day being won and lost through sheer 
gambling. Says a traveller through the West — 
" I have travelled a thousand miles at a time 
upon the Western waters and seen gambling at 
every waking moment from the commencement 
to the termination of the journey." The South- 
west of this country reeks with this abomination. 
In New Orleans every third or fourth house in 
many of the streets is a gaming place, and it 
may be truthfully averred that each and all of 
our cities are cursed with this evil. 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 159 

In themselves most of the games employed in 
gambling are without harm. Billiard-tables are 
as harmless as tea-tables, and a pack of cards as 
a pack of letter envelopes, unless stakes be put 
up. But by their use for gambling purposes 
they have become significant of an infinity of 
wretchedness. In New York city there are said 
to be six thousand houses devoted to this sin ; 
in Philadelphia about four thousand ; in Cincin- 
nati about one thousand ; at Washington the 
amount of gaming is beyond calculation. 
There have been seasons when, by night, 
Senators, Representatives, and Ministers of 
Foreign Governments were found engaged in 
this practice. 

Men wishing to gamble will find places just 
suited to their capacity, not only in the under- 
ground oyster- cellar, or at the table back of the 
curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the 
steamboat smoking cabin, where the bloated 
wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack, 
and winks in the unsuspecting traveller, — provid- 
ing free drinks all around, — but in gilded parlors 
and amid gorgeous surroundings. 

This sin works ruin, first, by unhealthful stim- 



160 The Abominations. 

ulants. Excitement is pleasurable. Under 
every sky, and in every age, men have sought 
it. The Chinaman gets it by smoking his 
opium ; the Persian by chewing hashish ; the 
trapper in a buffalo hunt ; the sailor in a squall ; 
the inebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at 
the gaming-table. 

We must at times have excitement. A thou- 
sand voices in our nature demand it. It is right. 
It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a desire 
God-given. But anything that first gratifies this 
appetite and hurls it back in a terrific reaction is 
deplorable and wicked. Look out for the agita- 
tion that, like a rough musician, in bringing out 
the tune, plays so hard he breaks down the in- 
strument ! 

God never made man strong enough to en- 
dure the wear and tear of gambling excitement. 
No wonder if, after having failed in the game, 
men have begun to sweep off imaginary gold 
from the side of the table. The man was sharp 
enough when he started at the game, but a 
maniac at the close. At every gaming-table sit 
on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm, Romance — the 
frenzy of joy ; on the other side, Fierceness, 



The Fatal Ten-Strike. 161 

Rage, and Tumult. The professional gamester 
schools himself into apparent quietness. The 
keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat, 
rollicking, and obese ; but thorough and profes- 
sional gamblers, in nine cases out of ten, are 
pale, thin, wheezing, tremulous, and exhausted. 

A young man, having suddenly heired a large 
property, sits at the hazard-table, and takes up 
in a dice-box the estate won by a father's life- 
time sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away. 

Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim- 
kicking him out, a slavering fool, into the ditch, 
or sending him, with the drunkard's hiccough, 
staggering up the street where his family lives. 
But gambling does not, in that way, expose its 
victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the 
gambler's passion, yet only discover it by the 
greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, 
the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat, 
and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on 
the road to hell, and no preacher's voice, or 
startling warning, or wife's entreaty, can make 
him stay for a» moment his headlong career. 
The infernal spell is on him ; a giant is aroused 
within ; and though you bind him with cables, 



t6s The Abominations. 

they would part like thread ; and though you 
fasten him seven times round with chains, they 
would snap like rusted wire ; and though you 
piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts 
and sermons, and on the top should set the 
cross of the Son of God, over them all the gam- 
bler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his 
way to perdition. 

Again, this sin works ruin by killing indus- 
try. 

A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of 
dollars from the gaming-table will not be con- 
tent with slow work. He will say, "What is the 
use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my 
store when I can get five times that in half an 
hour down at ■ Billy's '? " You never knew a 
confirmed gambler who was industrious. The 
men given to this vice spend their time not 
actively employed in the game in idleness, or 
intoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new vic- 
tims. This sin has dulled the carpenter's saw, 
and cut the band of the factory wheel, sunk the 
cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer's harrow, 
and sent a strange lightning to shatter the bat- 
tery of the philosopher. 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 163 

The very first idea in gaming is at war with 
all the industries of society. Any trade or oc- 
cupation that is of use is ennobling. The street 
sweeper advances the interests of society by the 
cleanliness effected. The cat pays for the frag- 
ments it eats by clearing the house of vermin. 
The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs 
of the cup compensates by purifying the air and 
keeping back the pestilence. But the gambler 
gives not anything for that which lie takes. 

I recall that sentence. He does make a re- 
turn ; but it is disgrace to the man that he 
fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business, 
anguish to his wife, shame to his children, and 
eternal wasting away to his soul. He pays in 
tears and blood, and agony, and darkness, and 
woe. 

What dull work is ploughing to the farmer, 
when in the village saloon, in one night, he 
makes and loses the value of a summer harvest ? 
Who will want to sell tape, and measure nan- 
keen, and cut garments, and weigh sugars, when 
in a night's game he makes and loses, and makes 
again, and loses again, the profits of a season ? 

John Borack was sent as mercantile agent 



164 The Abominations. 

from Bremen to England and this country. 
After two years his employers mistrusted that 
all was not right. He was a defaulter for 
eighty-seven thousand dollars. It was found 
that he had lost in Lombard street, London, 
twenty-nine thousand dollars ; in Fulton street, 
New York, ten thousand dollars ; and in New 
Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was im- 
prisoned, but afterwards escaped and went into 
the gambling* profession. He died in a lunatic 
asylum. 

This crime is getting its pry under many a 
mercantile house in our cities, and before long 
down will come the great establishment, crush- 
ing reputation, home, comfort, and immortal 
souls. How it diverts and sinks capital may be 
inferred from some authentic statements before 
us. The ten gaming-houses that once were 
authorized in Paris passed through the banks, 
yearly, three hundred and twenty-five millions 
of francs ! The houses of this kind in Germany 
yield vast sums to the government. The Ham- 
burg establishment pays to the government 
treasury forty thousand florins ; and Baden 
Baden one hundred and twenty thousand florins. 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 165 

Each one of the banks in the large gaming- 
houses of Germany has forty or fifty croupiers 
standing in its service. 

Where does all the money come from ? The 
whole world is robbed! What is most sad, 
there are no consolations for the loss and suffer- 
ing entailed by gaming. If men fail in lawful 
business, God pities, and society commiserates ; 
but where in the Bible, or in society, is there 
any consolation for the gambler ? From what 
tree of the forest oozes there a balm that can 
soothe the gamester's heart ? In that bottle 
where God keeps the tears of his children, are 
there any tears of the gambler ? Do the winds 
that come to kiss the faded cheek of sickness, 
and to cool the heated brow of the laborer, 
whisper hope and cheer to the emaciated victim 
of the game of hazard ? When an honest man 
is in trouble, he has sympathy. " Poor fellow ! " 
they say. But do gamblers come to weep at 
the agonies of the gambler ? In Northumber- 
land was one of the finest estates in England. 
Mr. Porter owned it, and in a year gambled it 
all away. Having lost the last acre of the 
estate, he came down from the saloon and got 



1 66 The Abominations. 

into his carriage ; went back ; put up his horses, 
and carriage, and town house, and played. He 
threw and lost. He started home, and on a 
side alley met a friend from whom he borrowed 
ten guineas ; went back to the saloon, and 
before a great while had won twenty thousand 
pounds. He died at last a beggar in St. Giles. 
How many gamblers felt sorry for Mr. Porter ? 
Who consoled him on the loss of his estate? 
What gambler subscribed to put a stone over 
the poor man's grave ? Not one ! 

Furthermore, this sin is the source of un- 
counted dishonesties. The game of hazard it- 
self is often a cheat. How many tricks and de- 
ceptions in the dealing of the cards ! The op- 
ponent's hand is ofttimes found out by fraud. 
Cards are marked so that they may be designa- 
ted from the back. Expert gamesters have 
their accomplices, and one wink may decide the 
game. The dice have been found loaded with 
platina, so that "doublets" come up every 
time. These dice are introduced by the gam- 
blers unobserved by the honest men who have 
come into the play ; and this accounts for the 
fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred who gam- 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 167 

ble, however wealthy they began, at the end 
are found to be poor, miserable, ragged wretch- 
es, that would not now be allowed to sit on the 
door-step of the house that they once owned. 

In a gaming-house in San Francisco, a young 
man having just come from the mines deposited 
a large sum upon the ace, and won twenty-two 
thousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense 
anxiety comes upon the countenances of all. 
Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fix- 
ed. Not a sound is heard, until the ace is re- 
vealed favorable to the bank. There are shouts 
of " Foul ! Foul ! " but the keepers of the table 
produce their pistols and the uproar is silenced, 
and the bank has won ninety-five thousand dol- 
lars. Do you call this a game of chance ? 
There is no chance about it. 

But these dishonesties in the carrying on of 
the game are nothing when compared with the 
frauds which are committed in order to get 
money to go on with the nefarious work. 
Gambling, with its greedy hand, has snatched 
away the widow's mite and the portion of the 
orphans ; has sold the daughter's virtue to get 
means to continue the game ; has written the 



1 68 The Abominations. 

counterfeit signature, emptied the banker's 
money vault, and wielded the assassin's dagger. 
There is no depth of meanness to which it will 
not stoop. There is no cruelty at which it is 
appalled. There is no warning of God that it 
will not dare. Merciless, unappeasable, fiercer 
and wilder it blinds, it hardens, it rends, it 
blasts, it crushes, it damns. It has peopled 
Moyamensing, and Auburn, and Sing Sing. 

How many railroad agents, and cashiers, and 
trustees of funds, it has driven to disgrace, in- 
carceration, and suicide ! Witness a cashier of 
the Central Railroad and Banking Company of 
Georgia, who stole one hundred and three thou- 
sand dollars to carry on his gaming practices. 
Witness the forty thousand dollars stolen from a 
Brooklyn bank ; and the one hundred and 
eighty thousand dollars taken from a Wall Street 
Insurance Company for the same purpose ! 
These are only illustrations on a large scale of 
the robberies every day committed for the pur- 
pose of carrying out the designs of gamblers. 
Hundreds of thousands of dollars every year 
leak out without observation from the mer- 
chant's till into the gambling hell. 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 169 

A man in London keeping one of these gam- 
bling houses boasted that he had ruined a no- 
bleman a day ; but if all the saloons of this land 
were to speak out, they might utter a more in- 
famous boast, for they have destroyed a thou- 
sand noblemen a year. 

Notice also the effect of this crime upon 
domestic happiness. It hath sent its ruthless 
ploughshare through hundreds of families, until 
the wife sat in rags, and the daughters were dis- 
graced, and the sons grew up to the same infa- 
mous practices, or took a short cut to destruction 
across the murderer's scaffold. Home has lost 
all charms for the gambler. How tame are the 
children's caresses and a wife's devotion to ..the 
gambler ! How drearily the fire burns on the 
domestic hearth ! There must be louder laugh- 
ter, and something to win and something to 
lose ; an excitement to drive the heart faster 
and fillip the blood and fire the imagination. 
No home, however bright, can keep back the 
gamester. The sweet call of love bounds back 
from his iron soul, and all endearments are con- 
sumed in the flame of his passion. The family 
Bible will go after all other treasures are lost, 



170 The Abominations, 

and if his everlasting crown in heaven were put 
into his hand he would cry : " Here goes, one 
more game, my boys ! On this one throw I 
stake my crown of heaven." 

A young man in London, on coming of age, 
received a fortune of one hundred and twenty 
thousand dollars, and through gambling in three 
years was thrown on his mother for support. 

An only son went to New Orleans. He was 
rich, intellectual, and elegant in manners. His 
parents gave him, on his departure from home, 
their last blessing. The sharpers got hold of him. 
They flattered him. They lured him to the gam- 
ing-table and let him win almost every time for a 
good while, and patted him on the back and said, 
"First-rate player." But, fully in their grasp, 
they fleeced him ; and his thirty thousand dollars 
were lost. Last of all he put up his watch and 
lost that. Then he began to think of home and 
of his old father and mother, and wrote thus : — 

" My beloved Parents : — You will doubtless feel a momen- 
tary joy at the reception of this letter from the child of your bo- 
som, on whom you have lavished all the favors of your declining 
years. But should a feeling of joy for a moment spring up in 
your hearts when you shall have received this from me, cherish 
it not. I have fallen deep — never to rise. Those gray hairs 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 171 

that I should have honored and protected I shall bring down 
with sorrow to the grave. I will not curse my destroyer, but 
oh ! may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practised upon 
the unwary in a way that shall best please Him. This, my dear 
parents, is the last letter you will ever receive from me. I hum- 
bly pray your forgiveness. It is my dying prayer. Long before 
you shall have received this letter from me the cold grave will 
have closed upon me forever. Life is to me insupportable. I 
cannot, nay, I will not suffer the shame of having ruined you. 
Forget and forgive is the dying prayer of your unfortunate son." 

The old father came to the post-office, got 
the letter, and fell to the floor. They thought 
he was dead at first ; but they brushed back 
the white hair from his brow and fanned him. 
He had only fainted. I wish he had been 
dead ; for what is life worth to a father after his 
son is destroyed ? 

When things go wrong at a gaming-table, 
they shout " Foul ! foul ! " Over all the 
gaming-tables of the world I cry out " Foul! 
foul ! Infinitely foul ! " 

In modern days, in addition to the other 
forms of gambling, have come up the thorough- 
ly organized and, in some States, legalized 
institution of lotteries. There are hundreds of 
citizens on the way to ruin through the lottery 
system. Some of the finest establishments in 



172 The Abominations. 

town are by this process being demolished, and 
the whole land feels the exhaustion of this ac- 
cumulating evil. The wheel of Fortune is the 
Juggernaut that is crushing out the life of this 
nation. The records of the Insolvent Court of 
one city show that, in five years, two hundred 
thousand dollars were lost by dealing in lottery 
tickets. All the officers of the celebrated 
Bank of the United States who failed were 
found to have expended the money embezzled 
for lottery tickets. 

A man drew in a lottery fifty thousand dol- 
lars, sold his ticket for forty-two thousand five 
hundred dollars, and yet did not have enougih 
to pay the charges against him for lottery 
tickets. He owed the brokers forty-five thou- 
sand dollars. 

An editor writes — '■' A man who, a few years 
ago, was blest with about twenty thousand 
dollars (lottery money), yesterday applied to us 
for ninepence to pay for a night's lodging." 

A highly respectable gentleman drew twenty 
thousand dollars in a lottery; bought more 
tickets, and drew again ; bought more — drew 
more largely ; then rushed down headlong un- 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 173 

til he was pronounced by the select men of the 
village a vagabond,. and his children were picked 
up from the street half starved and almost 
naked. 

A hard-working machinist draws a thousand 
dollars ; thenceforth he is disgusted with work, 
opens a rum grocery, is utterly debauched, and 
people go in his store to find him dead, close 
beside his rum-cask. 

It would take a pen plucked from the wing 
of the destroying angel and dipped in blood to 
describe this lottery business. 

A man committed suicide in New York, and 
upon his person was found a card of address 
giving a grog-shop as his boarding house, 
three blank lottery tickets, and a leaf from 
Seneca' s Morals, containing an apology for 
self-murder. 

One lottery in London was followed by the 
suicide of fifty persons who held unlucky 
numbers. 

There are men now, with lottery tickets in 
their pocket, which, if they have not sense 
enough. to tear up or throw into the fire, will 
be their admission ticket at the door of the 



174 yy* e Abominations. 

damned. As the brazen gates swing open they 
will show their tickets, and pass in and pass 
down. As the wheel of eternal Fortune turns 
slowly round, they will find that the doom of 
those who have despised God and imperilled 
their souls will be their awful prize. 

God forbid that you, my reader, should ever 
take to yourself the lamentation of the Boston 
clerk, who, in eight months, had embezzled 
eighteen thousand dollars from his employer 
and expended it all in lottery tickets. " I have 
for the last seven months gone fast down the 
broad road. There was a time, and that but a 
few months since, when I was happy, because I 
was free from debt and care. The moment of 
the first steps in my downfall was about the 
middle of last June, when I took a share in a 
company, bought lottery tickets whereby I was 
successful in obtaining a share of one-half of the 
capital prize, since which I have gone for 
myself. I have lived and dragged out a miser- 
able existence for two or three months past. 
Oh, that the seven or eight months past of my 
existence could be blotted out ; but I must go, 
and, ere this paper is read, my spirit has gone 



The Fatal Ten-Strike, 175 

to my Maker, to give an account of my misdeeds 
here, and to receive the eternal sentence for 
self-destruction and abused confidence. Rela- 
tives and friends I have, from whom I do not 
wish to part under such circumstances,* but 
necessity compels. Oh, wretch ! lottery tick- 
ets have been thy ruin. But I cannot add 
more." 

There are multitudes of people who disap- 
prove of ordinary lotteries, yet have been tho- 
roughly deceived by iniquity under a more 
attractive nomenclature. The lottery in which 
our most highly respectable and Christian 
people invest is some "Art Association," or 
some benevolent " Gift Enterprise," in which 
they fondly believe there can be no harm in 
drawing Bierstadt's Yosemite Valley, or Crop- 
sey's American Autumn ! 

At no time have lottery tickets been sown so 
broadcast as to-day, notwithstanding the law 
forbids the old-style lottery. 

A few years ago our newspapers flamed with 
the advertisements of the Crosby Opera House 
scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding on his 
hands an unprofitable building, calls upon the 



176 The Abominations. 

whole country to help him out. Rooms are 
opened in all the great cities. In rush, not the 
abandoned and the reprobate (for they like the 
old styles of swindling better), but the educated 
and refined and polished, until a host of people 
are in imminent peril of having thrown upon 
their hands a splendid Opera House. Philadel- 
phia buys thirty thousand dollars worth of 
tickets. The portentous day approaches. 
The rail trains from many of the prominent 
cities bring in dignified "Committees" who 
come to see that the great abomination is con- 
ducted in a decent and Christian manner. The 
throng presses in. Hold fast your tickets, all 
you respectable New Yorkers, Philadelphians, 
and Bostonians, for the wheel begins to move. 
The long agony is over. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of people have made a narrow escape 
from being ruined by sudden affluence. Swift 
horses are despatched, that, foam-lathered, 
dash up to the house of him who owns the 
successful ticket. The lightnings tell it to the 
four winds of heaven, and our weekly pictorials 
hasten forward the photographers to take the 
picture of the famous man who owned the 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 177 

ticket numbered 58,600. Multitudes think that 
there has been foul play, and that, after all, they 
themselves, if the truth were known, did draw 
the Opera House. Ten years from now there 
will stand on the scaffold, or behind the prison 
door, or in the lonely room in which the suicide 
writes his farewell to wife or parents, men who 
will say that the first misstep of their life that 
put them on the wrong road was the ticket 
they bought in the Crosby Opera House. 

The man who won that prize is already dead 
of his dissipations, and, strange to say, the 
beautiful building thus raffled away was found 
to be owned by'its original possessor when all 
the excitement in regard to the matter had died 
away; 

I care not on what street the office was, nor 
who were the abettors of the undertaking, nor 
who bought the tickets. I pronounce the 
whole scheme to have been a swindle, a crime, 
and an insult to God and the nation. 

In this class of gambler-makers I also put 
the " gift stores," which are becoming abundant 
throughout the country. With a book, or knife, 
or sewing machine, or coat, or carriage there 



178 The Abominations. 

goes a prize. At those stores people get some- 
thing thrown in with their purchase. It may 
be a gold watch or a set of silver, a ring or a 
farm. Sharp way to get off unsalable goods. 
It has filled the land with fictitious articles and 
covered up our population with brass finger- 
rings, and despoiled the moral sense of the 
community, and is fast making us a nation of 
gamblers. 

The Church of God has not seemed willing to 
allow the world to have all the advantage of 
these games of chance. A church fair opens, 
and towards the close it is found that some of 
the more valuable articles are unsalable. Forth- 
with the conductors of the enterprise conclude 
that they will raffle for some of the valuable ar- 
ticles, and, under pretence of anxiety to make 
their minister a present, or please some popular 
member of the church, fascinating persons are 
despatched through the room, pencil in hand, to 
" solicit " shares ; or perhaps each draws for his 
own advantage, and scores of people go home 
with their trophies, thinking that all is right, for 
Christian ladies did the embroidery, and Chris- 
tian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 179 

towards a new communion set. But you may 
depend on it that, as far as morality is concern- 
ed, you might as well have won by the crack of 
the billiard-ball or the turn of the dice-box. 

Some good people cannot stand this raffling, 
and so, at fairs, they go to "voting," some- 
times for editors, and sometimes for minis- 
ters, at a dollar a vote. Now the Methodist 
minister is ahead ; now the Presbyterian leads, 
and now the Baptist. But, just at the last 
moment, when one of the ministers of the more 
popular sect seems sure to get the prize, the 
members from some obscure denomination, 
that do not deserve the prize, come in, and by 
a large contribution carry off for their minister 
the silver tea-set. 

Do you wonder that churches built, light- 
ed, or upholstered by such processes as that 
come to great financial and spiritual decrepi- 
tude ? The devil says: ''I helped build that 
house of worship, and I have as much right 
there as you have ; " and for once the devil is 
right. 

We do not read that they had a lottery for 
building the church at Corinth or Antioch, 



180 The Abominations. 

or for getting up a gold-headed cane or for an 
embroidered surplice for Saint Paul. All this I 
style ecclesiastical gambling. More than one 
man who is destroyed can say that his first step 
on the wrong road was when he won something 
at a church fair. 

The gambling spirit has not stopped for any 
indecency. There lately transpired, in Mary- 
land, a lottery in which people drew for lots in 
a burying-ground ! The modern habit of bet- 
ting about everything is productive of im 
mense mischief. The most healthful and 
innocent amusements of yachting and base-ball 
playing have been the occasion of putting up 
excited and extravagant wagers. That which 
to many has been advantageous to body and 
mind has been to others the means of financial 
and moral loss. The custom is pernicious in 
the extreme where scores of men in respectable 
life give themselves up to betting, now on this 
boat now on that — now on the Atlantics and 
now on the Athletics. 

Betting, that once was chiefly the accompani- 
ment of the race-course, is fast becoming a 
national habit, and in some circles any opinion 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 181 

advanced on finance or politics is accosted with 
the interrogatory — " How much will you bet on 
that, sir?" 

This custom may make no appeal to slow, 
lethargic temperaments, but there are in the 
country tens of thousands of quick, nervous, 
sanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be 
acted upon, and their feet will soon take hold 
on death. For some months and perhaps for 
years they will linger in the more polite and 
elegant circle of gamesters, but, after a while, 
their pathway will come to the fatal plunge. 
Finding themselves in the rapids, they will try 
to back out, and, hurled over the brink, they 
will clutch the side of the boat until their 
finger-nails, blood-tipped, will pierce the wood, 
and then, with white cheek and agonized stare, 
and the horrors of the lost soul lifting the very 
hair from the scalp, they will plunge down 
where no grappling hooks can drag them out. 

Young man ! stand back from all styles of 
gambling ! The end thereof is death. The 
gamblers enter the ten-pin alley where are hus- 
bands, brothers, and fathers. " Put down your 
thousand dollars all in gold eagles ! Let the 



1 82 The Abominations. 

boy set up the pins at the other end of the alley ! 
Now stand back, and give the gamester full 
sweep ! Roll the first — there ! it strikes ! and 
down goes his respectability. Try it again. 
Roll the second — there ! it strikes ! and down 
goes the last feeling of humanity. Try it again. 
Roll the third — there ! it strikes ! and down 
goes his soul forever. It was not so much the 
pins that fell as the soul ! the soul ! FATAL 
Ten-Strike for Eternity ! " 

Shall I sketch the history of the gambler ? 
Lured by bad company, he finds his way into a 
place, where honest men ought never to go. 
He sits down to his first game only for pas- 
time and the desire of being thought sociable. 
The players deal out the cards. They uncon- 
sciously play into Satan's hands, who takes all 
the tricks, and both the players' souls for trumps 
— he being a sharper at any game. A slight 
stake is put up just to add interest to the play. 
Game after game is played. Larger stakes and 
still larger. They begin to move nervously on 
their chairs. Their brows lower and eyes flash, 
until now they who win and they who lose, 
fired alike with passion, sit with set jaws, and 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 183 

compressed lips, and clenched fists, and eyes 
like fire-balls that seem starting from their sock- 
ets, to see the final turn before it comes ; if los- 
ing, pale with envy and tremulous with unut- 
tered oaths cast back red-hot upon the heart — 
or, winning, with hysteric laugh — " Ha ! Ha ! I 
have it ! I have it ! " 

A few years have passed, and he -is only the 
wreck of a man. Seating himself at the game 
ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last 
relic of his wife, and the marriage-ring which 
sealed the solemn vows between them. The 
game is lost, and, staggering back in exhaustion, 
he dreams. The bright hours of the past mock 
his agony, and in his dreams, fiends, with eyes 
of fire and tongues of flame, circle about him 
with joined hands, to dance and sing their or- 
gies with hellish chorus, chanting — " Hail ! 
brother ! ' kissing his clammy forehead until 
their loathsome locks, flowing with serpents, 
crawl into his bosom and sink their sharp fangs 
and suck up his life's blood, and coiling around 
his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unut- 
terable. 

Take warning ! You are no stronger than 



184 The Abominations. 

tens of thousands who have, by this practice, 
been overthrown. No young man in our cities 
can escape being tempted. Beware of the first 
beginnings ! This road is a down-grade, and 
every instant increases the momentum. Launch 
not upon this treacherous sea. Split hulks 
strew the beach. Everlasting storms howl up 
and down, tossing the unwary crafts into the 
Hell-gate. I speak of what I have seen with 
my own eyes. I have looked off into the abyss 
and have seen the foaming, and the hissing, and 
the whirling of the horrid deep in which the 
mangled victims writhed, one upon another, and 
struggled, strangled, blasphemed, and died — 
the death-stare of eternal despair upon their 
countenances as the waters gurgled over them. 

To a gambler's death-bed there comes no 
hope. He will probably die alone. His former 
associates come not nigh his dwelling. When 
the hour comes, his miserable soul will go out 
of a miserable life into a miserable eternity. As 
his poor remains pass the house where he was 
ruined, old companions may look out a moment 
and say — M There goes the old carcass — dead 
at last," but they will not get up from the table. 



The Fatal Ten- Strike. 185 

Let him down now into his grave. Plant no 
tree to cast its shade there, for the long, deep, 
eternal gloom that settles there is shadow 
enough. Plant no " forget-me-nots " or eglan- 
tines around the spot, for flowers were not 
made to grow on such a blasted heath. Visit 
it not in the sunshine, for that would be mock- 
ery, but in the dismal night, when no stars are 
out, and the spirits of darkness come down 
horsed on the wind, then visit the grave of the 
gambler ! 



SOME OF THE CLUB-HOUSES. 

Iniquity never gives a fair fight. It springs 
out from ambush upon the unsuspecting. Of 
the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad 
habits, not one deliberately leaped off, but all 
were caught in some sly trap. You may have 
watched a panther or a cat about to take its 
prey. It crouches down, puts its mouth be- 
tween its paws, and is hardly to be seen in the 
long grass. So iniquity always crouches down 
in unexpected shapes, takes aim with unerring 
eye, and then springs upon you with sudden 
and terrific leap. In secret places and in un- 
looked-for shapes it murders the innocent. 

Men are gregarious. Cattle in herds. Fish 
in schools. Birds in flocks. Men in social 
circles. You may, by the discharge of a gun, 
scatter a flock of quails, or by the plunge of the 
anchor send apart the denizens of the sea ; but 
they will gather themselves together again. If 
you, by some new power, could break the 
associations in which men now stand, they 



Some of the Club-Houses. 187 

would again adhere. God meant it so. He 
has gathered all the flowers and shrubs into 
associations. You may plant one "forget-me- 
not" or " hearts-ease " alone, away off upon the 
hillside, but it will soon hunt up some other 
" forget-me-not ,: or "hearts-ease." Plants 
love company ; you will find them talking to 
each other in the dew. A galaxy of stars is 
only a mutual life-insurance company. You 
sometimes see a man with no out-branchings of 
sympathy. His nature is cold and hard, like a 
ship's mast, ice-glazed, which the most agile 
sailor could never climb. Others have a thou- 
sand roots and a thousand branches. Innumer- 
able tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all 
the way up ; and the fowls of heaven sing in 
the branches. 

In consequence of this tendency, we find men 
coming together in tribes, in communities, in 
churches, in societies. Some gather together 
to cultivate the arts ; some to plan for the wel- 
fare of the State ; some to discuss religious 
themes ; some to kindle their mirth ; some to 
advance their craft. So every active commu- 
nity is divided into associations of artists, of 



1 88 The A bominations. 

merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters, of 
masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plum- 
bers. Do you cry out against it ? Then you 
cry out against a tendency divinely implanted. 
Your tirades will accomplish no more than if 
you should preach to a busy ant-hill or bee- 
hive a long sermon against secret societies. 

Here we find in our path the oft-discussed 
question, whether associations that do their 
work with closed doors, and admit their 
members by pass-words, and greet each other 
with a secret grip, are right or wrong. I 
answer that it depends entirely upon the nature 
of the object for which they meet. Is it to pass 
the hours in revelry, wassail, blasphemy, and 
obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State, 
or to debauch the innocent ? Then I say, 
with an emphasis that no man can mistake, 
"No." But is the object the improvement of 
the mind, or the enlargement of the heart, 
or the advancement of art, or the defence of 
the government, or the extirpation of crime, 
or the kindling of a pure-hearted sociality ? 
Then I say, with just as much emphasis, 
"YES." 



Some of the* Club-Houses. 189 

There is no need that we who plan for the 
conquest of right over wrong should publish to 
all the world our intentions. The general of an 
army never sends to the opposing troops infor- 
mation as to the coming attack. Shall we who 
have enlisted in the cause of God and humanity 
expose our plans to the enemy ? No ! We 
will in secret plot the ruin of all the enterprises 
of Satan and his cohorts. When they expect 
us by day, we will fall upon them by night. 
While they are strengthening their left wing, we 
will double up their right. By a plan of battle 
formed in secret conclave, we will come sudden- 
ly upon them, crying : "The sword of the Lord 
and of Gideon ! " 

Secrecy of plot and execution are wrong only 
when the object and influence are nefarious. 
Every family is a secret society ; every business 
firm, and every banking and insurance institu- 
tion. Those men who have no capacity to 
keep a secret are unfit for positions of trust 
anywhere. There are thousands of men whose 
vital need is culturing in .capacity to keep a 
secret. Men talk too much — and women too. 
There is a time to keep silence, as well as a 



190 The Abominations. 

time to speak. Although not belonging to any 
of the great secret societies about which there 
has been so much violent discussion, I have 
only words of praise for those associations 
which have for their object the reclamation of 
inebriates, or like the score of mutual benefit 
societies, called by different names, that provide 
temporary relief for widows and orphans, and 
for men incapacitated by sickness or accident 
for earning a livelihood. 

I suppose there are club-houses in our cities 
to which men go with clear consciences, and 
from which they come after an hour or two of 
intellectual talk, and cheerful interview, to en- 
joy the domestic circle. But that this is not 
the character of scores and hundreds of club- 
houses we all know. Can I, then, pass this 
subject by without exposition of the monstrous 
evil ? There are multitudes who are uncon- 
sciously having their physical, moral, and 
eternal well-being endangered by club-room 
dissipation. Was it right to expose the plot 
of Guy Fawkes, by which he would have de- 
stroyed the Parliament of England ? And am I 
wrong in disclosing a peril which threatens not 



Some of the Club- Houses. 191 

only your well-being here, but your throne in 
heaven ? 

I deplore this ruin the more because this 
style of dissipation is taking down our finest 
men. The admission-fee sifts out the penurious 
and takes only those who are called the best 
fellows. Oh ! how changed you are ! Not so 
kind to your wife as you used to be ; not so 
patient with your- children. Your conscience 
is not so much at rest. You laugh more now, 
and sing louder than once, but are not half so 
happy. It is not the public drinking-saloon 
that is taking you down, nor theatrical amuse- 
ments, nor the houses of sin that have cost 
thousands of other men their eternity : but it is 
simply and undeniably your club-room. You 
do not make yourself as agreeable in your 
family as once. You go home at twelve o'clock 
with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and a 
strange color in your eye that you got at the 
club. You merely acknowledge that you feel- 
queer. You say that champagne never intoxi- 
cates ; that it only exhilarates, makes the con- 
versation fluent, shakes up the humor, and has 
no bad effect except a headache next day. 



192 The Abominations. 

Be not deceived. Champagne may not, like 
whiskey, throw a man under the table ; but if, 
through anything you drink, you gain an 
unnatural fluency of speech and glow of feel- 
ing, you are simply drunk. 

If those imperilled were heartless young men, 
stingy young men, I would not be so sorry as 
I am ; but there are many of them generous 
to a fault, frank, honest, cheerful, talented. I 
begrudge the devil such a prize. After a while 
these persons will lose all .the frankness and 
honor for which they are now distinguished, 
Their countenances will get haggard, and in- 
stead of looking one in the eye when they talk, 
they will look down. After a while, when the 
mother kindly asks, "What kept you out so 
late ? ". they will make no answer, or will say 
" That is my business ! " They will come cross 
and befogged to the store and bank, and ever 
and anon neglect some duty, and after a while 
will be dismissed : and then, with nothing to do, 
will rise in the morning at ten o'clock, cursing 
the servant because the breakfast is cold, and 
then go down town and stand on the steps of a 
fashionable hotel, and criticise the passers-by. 



Some of the Club-Houses. 193 

While the young man who was a clerk in a 
cellar has come up to be the first clerk, and he 
who a few years ago ran errands for the bank 
has got to be cashier, and thousands of other 
young men of the city have gone up to higher 
and more responsible positions, he has been 
going down, until there he passes through the 
street with bloated lip, and bloodshot eye, and 
staggering step, and hat mud-spattered and set 
sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the ashes of 
his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he 
goes ! Look at him, all ye pure-hearted young 
men, and see the work of the fashionable club- 
room. I knew one such who, after the con- 
taminations of his club-house, leaped out of 
the third-story window to put an end to his 
wretchedness. 

Many who would not be seen drinking at the 
bar of a restaurant, think there is no dishonor 
and no peril connected with sitting down at a 
marble stand in an elegantly furnished parlor, 
to which they go with a private key, and where 
none are present except gentlemen as elegant as 
themselves. Everything so chaste in the sur- 
roundings ! Soft carpets, beautiful pictures, 
9 



194 The Abominations. 

cut glass, Italian top tables, frescoed walls. In 
just such places there are thousands of young 
men, middle-aged men, and old men, preparing 
themselves for overthrow. 

In many of these club-rooms the talk is not 
as pure and elevated as it might be. How is 
it, men and brothers, at half-past eleven o'clock, 
when the tankards are well emptied, and the 
smoke curls up from every lip ? Do they ever 
swear ? Are there stories told unworthy a man 
who venerates the name of his mother ? Does 
God, whose presence cannot be hindered by 
bolt, and who comes in without a pass-word, 
and is making up His record for the judgment- 
day, approve of the blasphemies you utter ? 

You think that there is no special danger, 
yet acknowledge that you have felt queer some- 
times. Your head was not right, and your 
stomach was disturbed. I will tell you what 
was the matter. You were drunk. You un- 
derstood not that protracted hiccough ; it was 
the drunkard's hiccough. You could not ex- 
plain that nausea ; it was the drunkard's vomit. 
The fact is that some of you, who have never 
in your own eyes or in the eyes of others fully 



Some of the Club- Houses. 195 

sacrificed your respectability, have for six 
months been written down in God's book as 
drunkards. 

How far down need a man go before he be- 
comes an inebriate ? Must he fall into the 
ditch ? No ! Must he get into a porter-house 
fight ? No ! Must he be senseless in the 
street ? Must he have the delirium tremens ? 
No ! He may wear satin and fine linen ; he 
may walk with hat scrupulously brushed ; may 
swing a gold-headed cane, and step in boots of 
French leather, dismount from a carriage, or 
draw tight rein over a swift, sleek, high-mettled, 
full-blooded Arabian span, but yet be so thor 
oughly under the power of strong drink that he 
is utterly offensive to his Maker and rotten as a 
heap of compost. 

The fact that this whole land to-day swelters 
with drunkenness I charge upon the drinking 
club houses. They wield an influence that makes 
it respectable, and I will not put my head to the 
pillow to-night until I have written against them 
one burning anathema maranatha ! When I 
see them dragging down scores of our young 
men, and slaying professed Christians at the very 



iq6 The Abominations. 

altar, and snatching off the garlands of life from 
those who would otherwise reign forever and 
forever, I tell you I hate them with a perfect 
hatred, and pray for more height, and depth, 
and length, and breadth of capacity with which 
to hate them. 

Along this blossoming and over-arched path- 
way, and through this long line of temptations 
that throw their garlands upon the brow, and 
ring their music into the ear, go a great host. 

No one can estimate the homes that have 
been shattered by the dissipations of the club- 
house. There are weak women who would 
never consent to a husband's absence in the 
evening, however important the duty that takes 
him away. Any man who wishes to take his 
share of the public burdens and is willing to 
work for the political, educational, and social 
advancement of the community must of ne- 
cessity spend some of his evenings away from 
home. There are associations and churches 
that have a right to demand a share of a man's 
presence and means, and that is a weak woman 
who always looks offended when her husband 
goes out in the evening. 



Some of the Club-Hotises. 197 

But club-houses become a pest when they de- 
mand all a man's evenings ; and that is a result 
we are called to deplore. Every head of a 
household is called to be its educator, its com- 
panion, its religious instructor and exemplar ; 
not only to furnish the wardrobe and to make 
the money to pay the bills when they come in, 
but to give his highest intellectual energies and 
social faculties to the amusement, instruction, 
and improvement of the household. 

But I describe the history of thousands of 
households when I say that the tea is rapidly 
taken, and while yet the family linger the father 
shoves back his chair, has ''an engagement," 
lights his cigar and starts out, not returning 
until after midnight. That is the history of 
three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, 
except when he is sick and cannot get out. 

How about home duties ? Have you fulfilled 
all your vows ? Would your wife ever have 
married you with such a prospect ? Wait until 
your sons get to be sixteen or seventeen years 
of age, and they too will shove back from the 
tea-table, have an "engagement," light their 
cigars, go over to their club-houses, their night- 



198 The Abominations. 

key rattling in your door after midnight — the 
effect of your example. And as your son's con- 
stitution may not be as strong as yours, and the 
liquor he drinks more terribly drugged, he will 
catch up with you on the road to death although 
you got the start of him. And so you will both 
go to hell together ! A revolving Drummond- 
light on the front of a locomotive casts its gleam 
through the darkness as it is turned around ; so 
I catch up the lamp of God's truth and turn it 
round until its tremendous glare flashes into all 
the club-houses of our cities. 

Flee the presence of the dissipating club- 
houses. " Paid your money ? " Sacrifice that 
rather than your soul." " Good fellows," are 
they ? They cannot stay what they are under 
such influences. Mollusca live two hundred 
fathoms down in the Norwegian seas. The Si- 
berian stag grows fat on the stunted growth 
of Altaian peaks. The Hedysarium thrives 
amid the desolation of Sahara. Tufts of osier 
and birch grow on the hot lips of volcanic 
Schneehalten. But good character and a useful 
life thrive amid club-room dissipations — Never ! 

The best way to make a wild beast cower is 



Some of the Club-Houses. 199 

to look him in the eye, but the best way to treat 
the temptations I have described is to turn your 
back and fly ! O ! my heart aches ! I see men 
struggling to get out of the serfdom of bad hab • 
its, and I want to help them. I have knelt with 
them and heard their cry for help. I have had 
them put one hand on each of my shoulders, 
and look me in the eye, with an agony of 
earnestness that the judgment shall have no 
power to make me forget, and from their lips, 
scorched with the fires of ruin, have heard them 
cry "God help me!" There is no rescue for 
such, save in the Lord Almighty. 

Well, what we do, we had better do right 
away. The clock ticks now and we hear it. 
After a while the clock will tick and we shall 
not hear it. Seated by a country fireside, I 
saw the fire kindle, blaze, and go out. I gath- 
ered up from the hearth enough for profitable 
reflections. Our life is just like the fire on that 
hearth. We put on fresh fagots, and the fire 
bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, 
gay of crackle — emblem of boyhood. Then the 
fire reddens into coals. The heat is fiercer ; 
and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens. 



200 The Abominations. 

With sweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all 
the hearth glows with the intensity — emblem 
of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to 
the coals. The heat lessens. The flickering 
shadows have died along the wall. The fagots 
drop apart. The household hover over the ex- 
piring embers. The last breath of smoke has 
been lost in the chimney. Fire is out. Shovel 
up the white remains. ASHES ! 



FLASK, BOTTLE, AND DEMIJOHN. 

THERE has in all ages and climes been a ten- 
dency to the improper use of stimulants. 
Noah, as if disgusted with the prevalence of 
water in his time, took to strong drink. By 
this vice Alexander the Conqueror was, con- 
quered. The Romans, at their feasts, fell off 
their seats with intoxication. Four hundred 
millions of our race are opium-eaters. India, 
Turkey, and China have groaned with the deso- 
lation ; and by it have been quenched such 
lights as Haller and De Quincey. One hundred 
millions are the victims of the betel-nut, which 
has specially accursed the East Indies. Three 
hundred millions chew hashish, and Persia, Bra- 
zil, and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars 
employ murowa ; the Mexicans the agave ; the 

Note. — This chapter, in its first shape, was given some cur- 
rency under the title of "The Evil Beast." I have, however, 
so revised and added to that Lecture, that, as here given, it is 
essentially a new presentation of the dreadful Abomination of 
Rum, and it is in this present shape that I wish the public to re- 
ceive it as a full expression of my views thereon. T. D. W. T. 
9 * 



202 The Abominations. 

people of Guarapo an intoxicating quality taken 
from sugar-cane ; while a great multitude, that 
no man can number, are the disciples of alcohol. 
To it they bow. In its trenches they fall. In 
its awful prison they are incarcerated. On its 
ghastly holocaust they burn. 

Could the muster-roll of this great army be 
called, and they could come up from the dead, 
what eye could endure the reeking, festering 
putrefaction and beastliness! What heart 
could endure the groans of agony ! 

Drunkenness : Does it not jingle the bur- 
glar's key ? Does it not whet the assassin's 
knife ? Does it not cock the highwayman's 
pistol ? Does it not wave the incendiary's 
torch ? Has it not sent the physician reeling 
into the sick-room ; and the minister, with his 
tongue thick, into the pulpit? Did not an ex- 
quisite poet, from the very height of reputation, 
fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way 
to be married to one of the fairest daughters of 
New England, and at the very hour when the 
bride was decking herself for the altar ; and did 
he not die of delirium tremens, almost unattend- 
ed, in a New York hotel ? Tamerlane asked for 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 203 

one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with 
which to build a pyramid to his own honor. 
He got the skulls, and built the pyramid. But 
if the bones of all those who have fallen as a 
prey to dissipation could be piled up, it would 
make a monster pyramid. Talk not of Water- 
loo and Austerlitz, for they were not fields of 
blood compared with this great Golgotha. 

Who will gird himself for the journey, and try 
with me to scale this mountain of the dead — 
going up miles high on human carcasses, to find 
still other peaks far above, mountain above 
mountain, white with the bleached bones of 
drunkards ! 

Hang not your head or shut your eyes until 
we have seen it. We must get a sight at the 
monster before we can shoot him. 

I will begin at our national and State capi- 
tals. Like government, like people. Henry 
VIII. blasts all England with his example of 
uncleanness. Catharine of Russia drags down 
a whole empire with her nefarious behavior. 
No Christian man can be indifferent to what 
every hour of every day goes on at Washing- 
ton. While the Presidential Impeachment trial 



204 The Abominations. 

advanced, some of the men who were to render 
their solemn verdict on the subject were reeling 
in and out of the Senate chamber, — the intoxi- 
cated representatives of a free Christian people. 
It was a great question whether several mem- 
bers of that high court could be got sober in 
time to vote. 

Only recently a Senator from New England 
rises up with tongue so thick, and with utter- 
ance so nonsensical, that he is led into the ante- 
room. He was a good " Republican." 

One of the Middle States has a representative 
who very rarely appears in his seat, for the rea- 
son that he is so great an inebriate that he can 
neither walk nor ride. He is a good Democrat. 

As God looks down on our State and national 
legislatures, he holds us responsible. We cast 
the votes. We lift up the legislators. 

Will the time never come when this nation 
shall rise up higher than partisanship, and cast 
its suffrage for sober men ? 

The fact is that the two millions of dollars 
which the liquor dealers raised for the purpose 
of swaying State and national legislation has 
done its work, and the nation is debauched. 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 205 

Higher than legislatures or the Congress of the 
United States is the Whiskey Ring !' 

The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum 
traffic. To many of our people the best day of 
the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their 
shops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous 
to have loaves of bread going out on Sunday. 
The shoe-store is closed ; severe penalty will at- 
tack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath 
But down with the window-shutters of the grog 
shops. Our laws shall confer particular honors 
upon the rum traffickers. All other traders 
must stand aside for these. Let our citizens 
who have disgraced themselves by trading in 
clothing, and hosiery, and hardware, and lum- 
ber, and coal, take off their hats to the rum- 
seller, elected to particular honor. It is unsafe 
for any other class of men to be allowed license 
for Sunday work. But swing out your signs, 
oh ye traffickers in the peace of families, and in 
the souls of immortal men ! Let the corks fly, 
and the beer foam, and the rum go tearing 
down the half-consumed throat of the inebriate. 
God does not see, does he ? Judgment will 
never come, will it ? 



206 The Abominations. 

People say — "Let us have some law to 
correct this evil." We have more law now 
than we execute. In what city is there a 
mayoralty that dare do it ? There is no advan- 
tage in having the law higher than public 
opinion. What would be the use of the Maine 
Law in New York ? Neal Dow, the Mayor of 
Portland, came out with a posse and threw the 
rum of the city into the street. From the 
alms-house a woman came out and said, '* Oh ! 
if this had only been done ten years ago, my 
husband would not have died a drunkard, and 
I would not have been a widow in the alms- 
house." 

Rut there are not enough police in the city 
of New York to stand by its Mayor in such an 
undertaking ; public opinion is not educated. 

I do not know but that God is determined to 
let drunkards triumph ; and the husbands and 
sons of thousands of our best families be de- 
stroyed by this vice, in order that our people, 
amazed and indignant, may rise up and demand 
the extermination of this municipal crime. 

There is a way of driving down the hoops of 
a barrel until the hoops break. 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 207 

We are in this country, at this time, trying 
to regulate this evil by a tax on whiskey. You 
might as well try to regulate the Asiatic chol- 
era, or the small-pox, by taxation. The men 
who distil liquors are, for the most part, un- 
scrupulous ; and the higher the tax, the more 
inducement to illicit distillation. New York 
produces forty thousand gallons of whiskey 
every twenty-four hours ; and the most of it . 
escapes the tax. The most vigilant officials fail 
to discover the cellars, and vaults, and sheds 
where this work is done. 

Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by 
government tariffs ! If every gallon of whiskey 
made, if every flask of wine produced, should 
be taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be 
enough to pay for the tears it has wrung out of 
the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the 
blood it has dashed on the altars of the Chris- 
tian Church, nor for the catastrophe of the 
millions it has destroyed forever. 

Oh ! we are a Christian people ! From Bos- 
ton a ship sailed for Africa, with three mis- 
sionaries, and twenty-two thousand gallons 
of New-England rum on board. Which will 



2o8 The Abominations. 

have the most effect: the missionaries, or the 
rum ? 

Rum is victor. Some time when you have 
leisure, just go down any of our streets, and 
'count the number of drinking places. Here 
they are- — first-class hotels. Marble floors. 
Counter polished. Fine picture hanging over 
the decanters. Cut glass. Silver water-cool- 
ers. Pictured punch-bowls. High-priced liq- 
uors. Customers pull off -their gloves, and 
take up the glasses, and click them, and with 
immaculate pocket handkerchief wipe their 
mouth, and go up-stairs, or into the reading- 
room, and complete extensive bargains. 

Here it is — the restaurant. All sorts of vi- 
ands, but chiefly all styles of beverage. They 
who frequent this place have fairly started on 
the down grade. Having drunk once, they 
lounge at the corner of the bar until a friend 
comes up, and then the beverage is repeated. 
After a while they sit at the little table by the 
wall and order a rarer wine ; for they feel richer 
now, and able to get almost anything. Towards 
bed-time they take out their watch and say they 
must go home. They start, but cannot stand 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 209 

straight. With a gentleman at each arm, they 
start up the street. More and more overcome, 
the man begins to whoop, and shout, and swear, 
and refuse to go any farther. Hat falls off. 
Hair gets over his eyes. Door-bell of fine 
house rings. Wife comes down the stairs. 
Daughters look over the banisters. Sobbing 
in the dark hall. Quick — shut the front door, 
for I do not want to look in. God help 
them ! 

Here it is — a wine-cellar. Going into the 
door are depraved men and lost women. Some 
stagger. All blaspheme. Men with rings in 
their ears instead of their nose ; and blotches of 
breast-pin. Pictures on the wall cut out of the 
Police . Gazette. A slush of beer on floor and 
counter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian's pock- 
et. By the gas-light a knife flashes. Low 
songs. They banter, and jeer, and howl, and 
vomit. An awful goal, to which hundreds of 
people better than you have come. 

All these different styles of drinking-places 
are multiplying. They smite a young man's 
vision at every turn. They pour the stench of 
their abomination on every wave of air. 



2io The Abominations. 

I sketch two houses in this street. The first 
is bright as home can be. The father comes at 
nightfall, and the children run out to meet 
him. Luxuriant evening meal, gratulation, and 
sympathy, and laughter. Music in the parlor. 
Fine pictures on the wall. Costly books on the 
stand. Well-clad household. Plenty of every- 
thing to make home happy. 

House the second. Piano sold yesterday by 
the sheriff. Wife's furs at pawnbroker's shop. 
Clock gone. Daughter's jewelry sold to get 
flour. Carpets gone off the floor. Daughters 
in faded and patched dresses. Wife sewing for 
the stores. Little child with an ugly wound on 
her face, struck in an angry blow. Deep shadow 
of wretchedness falling in every room. Door- 
bell rings. Little children hide. Daughters 
turn pale. Wife holds her breath. Blundering 
steps in the hall. Door opens. Fiend, brand- 
ishing his fist, cries — "Out! Out! What are 
you doing here ! " 

Did I call this house the second ? No ; it is 
the same house. Rum transformed it. Rum 
imbruted the man. Rum sold the shawl. 
Rum tore up the carpets. Rum shook its fist. 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 211 

Rum desolated the hearth. Rum changed that 
paradise into a hell ! 

I sketch two men that you know very well. 
The first graduated from one of our literary in- 
stitutions. His father, mother, brothers and 
sisters were present to see him graduate. They 
heard the applauding thunders that greeted his 
speech. They saw the bouquets tossed to his 
feet. They saw the degree conferred and the 
diploma given. He never looked so well. 
Everybody said, " What a noble brow ! What 
a fine eye ! What graceful manners ! What 
brilliant prospects ! " All the world opens be- 
fore him and cries, " Hurrah ! Hurrah ! " 

Man the second. Lies in the station-house 
to-night. The doctor has just been sent for to 
bind up the gashes received in a fight. His 
hair is matted, and makes him look like a wild 
beast. His lip is bloody and cut. 

Who is the battered and bruised wretch that 
was picked up by the police and carried in 
drunk, and foul, and bleeding ? Did I call him 
man the second ? He is man the first ! Rum 
transformed him. Rum destroyed his pros- 
pects. Rum disappointed parental expectation. 



212 Tk e A bom inations. 

Rum withered those garlands of commence- 
ment-day. Rum cut his lip. Rum dashed 
out his manhood. RUM, accursed RUM ! 

This foul thing gives one swing to its scythe, 
and our best merchants fall ; their stores are 
sold, and they slink into dishonored graves. 

Again it swings its scythe, and some of our 
best physicians fall into sufferings that their 
wisest prescriptions cannot cure. 

Again it swings its scythe, and ministers of 
the gospel fall from the heights of Zion with 
long-resounding crash of ruin and shame. 

Some of your own household have already 
been shaken. Perhaps you can hardly admit 
it ; but where was your son last night ? Where 
was he Friday night ? Where was he Thurs- 
day night ? Wednesday night ? Tuesday 
night ? Monday night ? 

Nay, have not some of you, in your own 
bodies, felt the power of this habit ? You 
think that you could stop ? Are you sure you 
could ? Go on a little further, and I am sure 
you cannot. I think, if some of you should 
try to break away, you would find a chain on 
the right wrist, and one on the left ; one on the 



Flask, Bottle ■, and Demijohn. 213 

right foot, and another on the left. This ser- 
pent does not begin to hurt until it has wound 
around and round. Then it begins to tighten, 
and strangle, and crush until the bones crack, 
and the blood trickles, and the eyes start from 
their sockets, and the mangled wretch cries 
"O God! O God! Help! Help!" But it is 
too late ; and nothing but the fires of woe can 
melt the chain when once it is fully fastened. 

The child of a drunkard died. My friend, 
a minister of the Gospel, sat in a carriage with 
the drunkard, and the coffin of the little child. 
On the way to the grave, the drunkard put his 
hand on the lid of his child's coffin and swore 
that he never would drink again. Before the 
next morning had come he was dead drunk ! 

I spread out before you the starvation, the 
cruelty, the ghastliness, the woes, the terror, the 
anguish, the perdition of this evil, and then 
ask, Are you ready, fully and forever, to sur- 
render our churches, our homes, our civiliza- 
tion, our glorious Christianity? One or the 
other must surrender. It can be no " drawn 
battle." 

But how are we to contend ? 



214 The Abominations, 

First, by getting our children right on this 
subject. Let them grow up with an utter 
aversion to strong drink. Take care how you 
administer it even as medicine. If you find 
that they have a natural love for it, as some 
have, put in a glass of it some horrid stuff and 
make it utterly nauseous. Teach them as faith- 
fully as you do the catechism, that rum is a 
fiend. Take them to the alms-house and show 
them the wreck and ruin it works. Walk with 
them into the homes that have been scourged 
by it. If a drunkard hath fallen into a ditch, 
take them right up where they can see his 
face, bruised, savage and swollen, and say, 
" Look, my son : Rum did that ! " 

Looking out of your window at some one 
who, intoxicated to madness, goes through the 
street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God, 
— a howling, defying, shouting, reeling, raving 
and foaming maniac, — say to your son, "Look ; 
that man was once a child like you." As you 
go by the grog-shop, let your boy know that 
that is the place where men are slain, and their 
wives made paupers, and their children slaves. 
Hold out to your children all warnings, all 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 215 

rewards, all counsels, lest in after days they 
break your heart, and curse your gray hairs. 

A man laughed at my father for his scrupu- 
lous temperance principles, and said — '*■ I am 
more liberal than you. I always give my 
children the sugar in the glass after we have 
been taking a drink." 

Three of his sons have died drunkards ; and 
the fourth is imbecile through intemperate 
habits. 

Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot- 
box. How many men are there who can rise 
above the feelings of partisanship, and demand 
that our officials shall be sober men ? 

I maintain that the question of sobriety is 
higher than the question of availability ; and 
that however eminent a man's services may be, 
if he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit 
for any office in the gift of a Christian people. 
Our laws will be no better than the men who 
make them. 

Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, 
or Washington, and you will find out why, 
upon these subjects, it is impossible to get 
righteous enactments. 



216 The Abominations. 

Again, we will war upon this evil by organ- 
ized societies. The friends of the rum traffic 
have banded together; annually issue their 
circulars ; raise fabulous sums of money to 
advance their interests ; and by grips, pass- 
words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance 
public morals. Let us confront them with 
organizations just as secret, and, if need be, with 
grips, and pass-words, and signs maintain our 
position. There is no need that our philan- 
thropic societies tell all their plans. 

I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the 
carrying on of this conflict. I wish to God 
we could lay under the wine-casks a train, 
which, once ignited, would shake the earth 
with the explosion of this monstrous ini- 
quity. 

Again : we will try the power of the pledge. 
There are thousands of men who have been 
saved by putting their names to such a docu- 
ment. I know it is laughed at ; but there are 
men who, having once promised a thing, do it. 
"Some have broken the pledge." Yes; they 
were liars. But all men are not liars. I do 
not say that it is the duty of all persons to 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 217 

make such signature ; but I do say that it will 
be the salvation of many of you. 

The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can 
never be estimated. At his hand four millions 
of people took the pledge, including eight pre- 
lates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic 
clergy. A multitude of them were faithful. 

Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand 
drunkards had been permanently reformed in 
five years. 

Through the great Washingtonian movement 
in Ohio, sixty thousand took the pledge. In 
Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Ken- 
tucky, thirty thousand, and multitudes in all 
parts of the land. Many of these had been 
habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty 
thousand of them, it is estimated, were perma- 
nently reclaimed. Two of these men became 
foreign ministers ; one a governor of a State ; 
several were sent to Congress. Hartford re- 
ported six hundred reformed drunkards ; Nor- 
wich, seventy-two ; Fairfield, fifty ; Sheffield, 
seventy-five. All over the land reformed men 
were received back into the churches that they 
had before disgraced ; and households were 

TO 



2i8 The Abominations. 

re-established. All up and down the land 
there were gratulations, and praise to God. 
The pledge signed, to thousands has been the 
proclamation of emancipation. 

I think that we are coming at last to treat 
inebriation as it ought to be treated, namely, 
as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure, but 
nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a 
man, sermons will not cure him ; temperance 
lectures will not eradicate the taste ; religious 
tracts will not remove it ; the Gospel of Christ 
will not arrest it. Once under the power of 
this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on; 
and if the foaming glass were on the other side 
of perdition, he would wade through the fires 
of hell to get it. A young man in prison had 
such a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors, 
that he cut off his hand at the wrist, called for a 
bowl of brandy in order to stop the bleeding, 
thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank 
the contents. 

Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between 
a man and his cups ! Clear the track for him ! 
Away with the children : he would tread their 
life out ! Away with the wife : he would dash 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 219 

her to death ! Away with the Cross : he 
would run it down ! Away with the Bible : 
he would tear it up for the winds ! Away with 
heaven : he considers it worthless as a straw ! 
" Give me the drink ! Give it to me ! Though 
hands of blood pass up the bowl, and the soul 
trembles over the pit, — the drink ! give it to 
me ! Though it be pale with tears ; though 
the froth of everlasting anguish float in the 
foam — give it to me ! I drink to my wife's 
woe ; to my children's rags ; to my eternal 
banishment from God, and hope, and heaven ! 
Give it to me ! the drink ! " 

Again : we will contend against these evils 
by trying to persuade the respectable classes 
of society to the banishment of alcoholic 
beverages. You who move in elegant and 
refined associations ; you who drink the best 
liquors ; you who never drink until you lose 
your balance : consider that you have, under 
God, in your power the redemption of this 
land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars 
and wine-closets of the beverage, and then 
come out and give us your hand, your vote, 
your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and 



220 The Abnminatiom. 

I will promise three things : First, That you 
will find unspeakable happiness in having done 
your duty ; secondly, you will probably save 
somebody, perhaps your own child ; thirdly, 
you will not, in your last hour, have a regret 
that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be. 

As long as you make drinking respectable, 
drinking customs will prevail ; and the plough- 
share of death, drawn by terrible disasters, 
will go on turning up this whole continent, 
from end to end, wi^h the long, deep, awful 
furrow of drunkards' graves. 

Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and 
hang up a skeleton in your beautiful house, so 
that when you opened the front door to go in 
you would see it in the hall ; and when you sit 
at your table you would see it hanging from the 
wall ; and when you cpen your bed-room you 
would find it stretched upon your pillow ; and 
waking at night you would feel its cold hand 
passing over your face and pinching at your 
heart ! 

There is no home so beautiful but it may be 
devastated by the awful curse. It throws its 
jargon into the sweetest harmony What was 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 221 

it that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered 
the golden sceptre with which he swayed parlia- 
ments and courts ? What foul sprite turned the 
sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless 
ballad ? What brought down the majestic form 
of one who awed the American Senate with his 
eloquence, and after a while carried him home 
dead drunk from the office of Secretary of State ? 
What was it that crippled the noble spirit of 
one of the heroes of the last war, until the other 
night, in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck 
of a Western steamer and was drowned ! There 
was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He 
was one of the most classic orators of the cen- 
tury. People wondered why a man of so pure 
a heart and so excellent a life should have such 
a sad countenance always. They knew not 
that his wife was a sot. 

w Woe to him that giveth his neighbor 
drink ! " If this curse was proclaimed about 
the comparatively harmless drinks of olden 
times, what condemnation must rest upon those 
who tempt their neighbors when intoxicating 
liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, 
opium, sulphuric acid, vitriol, turpentine, and 



K 



222 The Abominations. 

strychnine! "Pure liquors:" pure destruc- 
tion ! Nearly all the genuine champagne made 
is taken by the courts of Europe. What we 
get is horrible swill ! 

I call upon woman for her influence in the 
matter. Many a man who had reformed and 
resolved on a life of sobriety has been pitched 
off into old habits by the delicate hand of her 
whom he was anxious to please. 

Bishop Potter says that a young man who 
had been reformed sat at a table, and when the 
wine was passed to him refused to take it. A 
lady sitting at his side said, " Certainly you will 
not refuse to take a glass with me ? " Again 
he refused. But when she had derided him for 
lack of manliness he took the glass and drank 
it. He took another and another ; and putting 
his fist hard down on the table, said, " Now I 
drink until I die." In a few months his ruin 
was consummated. 

I call upon those who are guilty of these in- 
dulgences to quit the path of death. O what a 
change it would make in your home ! Do you 
see how everything there is being desolated ! 
Would you not like to bring back joy to your 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 223 

wife's heart, and have your children come out 
to meet you with as much confidence as once 
they showed ? Would you not like to rekindle 
the home lights that long ago were extinguish- 
ed ? It is not too late to change. It may not 
entirely obliterate from your soul the memory 
of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor 
smooth out from anxious brows the wrinkles 
which trouble has ploughed. It may not call 
back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done 
— for perhaps in those awful moments you struck 
her ! It may not take from your memory the 
bitter thoughts connected with some little grave : 
but it is not too late to save yourself and secure 
for God and your family the remainder of your 
fast-going life. 

But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. 
I may address one who may not have quite 
made up his mind. Let your better nature 
speak out. You take one side or the other in 
the war against drunkenness. Have you the 
courage to put your foot down right, and say to 
your companions and friends : "I will never 
drink intoxicating liquor in all my life, nor will I 
countenance the habit in others." Have noth- 



224 The Abominations. 

ing to do with strong drink. It has turned the 
earth into a place of skulls, and has stood open- 
ing the gate to a lost world to let in its victims, 
until now the door swings no more upon its 
hinges, but day and night stands wide open to 
let in the agonized procession of doomed men. 

Do I address one whose regular work in life 
is to administer to this appetite ? I beg you — 
get out of the business. If a woe be pronounced 
upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how 
many woes must be hanging over the man who 
does this every day, and every hour of the day ! 

A philanthropist, going up to the counter of a 
grog-shop, as the proprietor was mixing a 
drink for a toper standing at the counter, said 
to the proprietor, " Can you tell me what your 
business is good for ? " The proprietor, with 
an infernal laugh, said, " It fattens grave- 
yards ! " 

God knows better than you do yourself the 
number of drinks you have poured out. You 
keep a list ; but a more accurate list has been 
kept than yours. You may call it Burgundy, 
Bourbon, Cop" /',<;, Heidsick, Hock ; God calls it 
strong cHr>k Whether you sell it in low oyster 



Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 225 

cellar or behind the polished counter of first- 
class hotel, the divine curse is upon you. I tell 
you plainly that you will meet your customers 
one day when there will be no counter between 
you. When your work is done on earth, and you 
enter the reward of your business, all the souls 
of the men whom you have destroyed will 
crowd around you and pour their bitterness into 
your cup. They will show you their wounds 
and say, " You made them ; " and point to their 
unquenchable thirst, and say, "You kindled 
it;" and rattle their chain and say, "You 
forged it." Then their united groans will smite 
your ears ; and with the hands out of which you 
once picked the sixpences and the dimes, they 
will push you off the verge of great precipices ; 
while, rolling up from beneath, and breaking 
among the crags of death, will thunder : 

" Woe to him that giveth his neighbor 

drink / " 

10* 



THE HOUSE OF BLACKNESS OF 
DARKNESS. 

Men like to hear the frailties and faults of 
others chastised. With what blandness and 
placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher 
excoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery 
of Judas, the treason of Athaliah, and the wick- 
edness of the Amalekites. Indeed, I have 
sometimes felt sorry for the Amalekites, for in 
all ages, and on all occasions, they are smitten, 
denounced, and pursued. They have had theit 
full share of censure and excoriation. It is high 
time that in our addresses in pulpits, and in do- 
mestic circles, we turn our attention to the driv- 
ing out of these worse Amalekites which are 
swarming in society to-day, thicker than in the 
olden time. The ancient Amalekites lived for 
one or two hundred years ; but these are not 
weakened after a thousand years. Those tra- 
versed only a few leagues of land ; these stalk 
the earth and ford the sea. Those had each a 
sword or spear ; these fight with a million 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 227 

swords, and strike with a million stings, and 
smite with a million catastrophes. Those were 
conquered with human weapons ; but to over- 
come these we must bring out God's great field- 
pieces, and employ an enginery that can sweep 
from eternity to eternity. 

There is one subject which we are expected, in 
all our teachings, to shun, or only to hint at: I 
mean the wickedness of an impure life. Though 
God thunders against this appalling iniquity from 
the heavens curse after curse, anathema after 
anathema, by our unwillingness to repeat the 
divine utterance we seem to say, " Lord, not so 
loud ! Speak about everything else ; but if this 
keeps on there will be trouble ! " Meanwhile 
the foundations of social life are being slowly 
undermined ; and many of the upper circles of 
life have putrefied until they have no more 
power to rot. 

If a fox or a mink come down to the farm- 
yard and carry off a chicken, the whole family 
join in the search. 

If a panther come down into the village and 
carry off a child, the whole neighborhood go 
out with clubs and guns to bring it down. 



228 The Abominations, 

But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying 
off body and soul ; and yet, if we speak, a thou- 
sand voices bid us be silent. 

I shall try to cut to the vitals of the .subject, 
and proceed with the post-mortem of this carcass 
of death. It is time to speak on this subject. 
All the indignation of the community upon this 
subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an 
evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city 
goes howling after her. She shall take the whole 
blame. Out with her from all decent circles ! 
Whip her. Flay her. Bar all the doors of so 
ciety against her return. Set on her all the 
blood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after 
precipice. Push her down. Kick her out ! 
If you see her struggling on the waves, and with 
her blood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of 
respectability, drop a mill-stone on her head. 

For a woman's sin, men have no mercy ; and 
the heart of other women is more cruel than 
death. 

For her, in the dark hour of her calamity, 
the women who, with the same temptation, 
might have fallen into deeper damnation, have 
no commiseration and no prayer. 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 229 

The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a 
fallen woman's soul is the merciless indignation 
of her sisters. 

If the multitudes of the fallen could be placed 
in a straight line, it would reach from here to 
the gates of the lost, and back again. 

But what of the destroyer ? 

We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. 
We take off our hats. He is admitted to our 
parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him 
we speak our eulogies. And when he has gone 
we read over the heap of compost : " Blessed are 
the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from 
their labors and their works do follow them." 

In the fashionable city to-day there walk a 
thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. 
Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their 
bones have in them the decay of the pit. They 
have the eye of a basilisk. They have been 
soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and 
consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the 
loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of 
the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and 
pull it aside, and say, " Behold a Leper ! " 

First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will 



230 The Abominations, 

have nothing to do with bad books and impure 
newspapers. With such an affluent literature 
as is coming forth from our swift-revolving 
printing-presses, there is no excuse for drag- 
ging one's self through sewers of unchastity. 
Why walk in the ditch, when right beside the 
ditch is the solid flagging ? It seems that in 
the literature of the day the ten plagues of 
Egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice 
have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables. 

Waiting impatiently in the house of some 
parishioner, for the completion of a very pro- 
tracted toilet, I have picked up a book from 
the parlor table, and found that every leaf was 
a scale of leprosy. 

Parents are delighted to have their children 
read, but they should be sure as to what they 
read. You do not have to walk a day or two 
in an infected district to get the cholera or 
typhoid fever ; and one wave of moral un- 
health will fever and blast an immortal nature. 
Perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read 
a bad book. Do you not remember it alto- 
gether ? Yes ; and perhaps you will never get 
over it. 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 231 

However strong and exalted your character, 
never read a bad book. By the time you get 
through the first chapter you will see the drift. 
If you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil 
in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, 
away with it. You may tear your coat, or 
break a vase, and repair them again, but the 
point where the rip or fracture took place will 
always be evident. It takes less than an hour 
to do your heart a damage which no time can 
entirely repair. Look carefully over your 
child's library ; see what book it is that he reads 
after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned 
upon the pillow. Do not always take it for 
granted that a book is good because it is a Sun- 
day-school book. As far as possible know 
who wrote it, who illustrated it, who published 
it, who sold it. 

Young man, as you value heaven, never buy 
a book from one of those men who meet you 
in the square, and, after looking both ways, to 
see if the police are watching, shows you a 
book — very cheap. Have him arrested as you 
would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout 
" Police ! police ! " 



232 The Abominations. 

But there is more danger, I think, from 
many of the family papers, published once a 
week ; in those stories of vice and shame, 
full of infamous suggestions, going as far as 
they can without exposing themselves to the 
clutch of the law. I name none of them; but 
say that on some fashionable tables there lie 
" family newspapers " that are the very vomit 
of the pit. 

The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three 
dollars to go to Philadelphia ; six dollars to 
Boston ; thirty-three dollars to Savannah ; 
but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten 
cents, you may get a through ticket to hell, 
by express, with few stopping-places, and the 
final halting like the tumbling of the lightning 
train down the draw-bridge at Norwalk — sud- 
den, terrific, deathful, never to rise. 

O, the power of an iniquitous pen ! If a 
needle puncture the body at a certain point, life 
is destroyed ; but the pen is a sharper instru- 
ment, for with its puncture you may kill the soul. 
And that very thing many of our acutest minds 
are to-day doing. Do not think that this 
which you drain from the glass, because it is 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 233 

sweet, is therefore healthful : some of the worst 
poisons are pleasant to the taste. The pen 
which for the time fascinates you may be dipped 
in the slime of unclean literature. 

Look out for the books that come from 
France. It has sent us some grand histories, 
poems, and pure novels, but they are few in 
number compared with the nastiness that it has 
spewed out upon our shore. 

Do we not read in our Bibles that the ancient 
flood covered all the earth ? I would have 
thought that France had escaped, for it does 
not seem as if it had ever had a thorough 
washing. 

In the next place, if you would shun an im- 
pure life, avoid those who indulge in impure con- 
versation. There are many people whose chief 
mirthfulness is in that line. They are full of 
innuendo, and phrases of double meaning, and 
are always picking out of the conversation of 
decent men something vilely significant. It is 
astonishing in company, how many, professing 
to be Christians, will tell vile stories ; and that 
some Christian women, in their own circles, 
have no hesitation at the same style of talking. 



234 The Abominations. 

You take a step down hill, when, without 
resistance, you allow any one to put into your 
ear a vile innuendo. If, forgetting who you are, 
any man attempts to say such things in your 
presence, let your better nature assert itself, 
look the offender full in the face, and ask — 
" What do you mean by saying such a thing in 
my presence ! " Better allow a man to smite 
you in the face than to utter such conversation 
before you. I do not care who the men or 
women are that utter impure thoughts ; they 
are guilty of a mighty wrong ; and their influ- 
ence upon our young people is baleful. 

If in the club where you associate ; if in the 
social circle where you move, you hear de- 
praved conversation, fly for your life ! A man 
is no better than his talk ; and no man can 
have such interviews without being scarred. 

I charge our young men against considering 
uncleanness more tolerable, because it is sanc- 
tioned by the customs, habits, and practices of 
what is called high life. If this sin wears kid 
gloves, and patent leathers, and coat of exqui- 
site fit, and carries an opera-glass of costliest 
material, and lives in a big house, and rides in 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 235 

a splendid turn-out, is it to be any the less 
reprehended ? No ! No ! 

I warn you not so much against the abomina- 
tion that hides in the lower courts and alleys of 
the town, as against the more damnable vice 
that hides behind the white shutters and brown- 
stone fronts of the upper classes. 

God, once in a while, hitches up the fiery 
team of vengeance, and ploughs up the splendid 
libertinism, and we stand aghast. 

Sin, crawling out of the ditch of poverty and 
shame, has but few temptations ; but, gliding 
through the glittering drawing-room with mag- 
nificent robe, it draws the stars of heaven 
after it. 

Poets and painters have represented Satan as 
horned and hoofed. If I were a poet I should 
describe him with manners polished to the last 
perfection, hair flowing in graceful ringlets, eye 
a little blood-shot, but floating in bewitching 
languor ; hands soft and diamonded ; step light 
and artistic ; voice mellow as a flute ; boot ele- 
gantly shaped ; conversation facile, carefully 
toned, and Frenchy ; breath perfumed until it 
would seem that nothing had ever touched his 



236 The Abominations, 

lips save balm and myrrh. But his heart I 
would encase with the scales of a monster, then 
fill with pride, with beastliness of desire, with 
recklessness, with hypocrisy, with death. Then 
I would have him touched with some rod of dis- 
enchantment until his two eyes would become 
the cold orbs of the adder ; and on his lip would 
come the foam of raging intoxication ; and to 
his feet the spring of the panther ; and his soft 
hand should become the clammy hand of a 
wasted skeleton ; while suddenly from his heart 
would burst in crackling and all-devouring fury 
the unquenchable flames ; and in the affected 
lisp of his tongue would come the hiss of the 
worm that never dies. 

But, until disenchanted, nothing but myrrh, 
and balm, and ringlet, and diamond, and flute- 
like voice, and conversation aromatic, facile, 
and Frenchy. 

There are practices in respectable circles, 
I am told by physicians, which need public 
reprehension. Herod's massacre of the in- 
nocents was as nothing compared with that 
of millions and millions by what I shall call 
ante-natal murders. You may escape the grip 



House of Blackness of Darkness. 237 

of the law, because the existence of such life 
was not known by society ; but I tell you that 
at last God will shove down on you the ava- 
lanche of his indignation ; and though you may 
not have wielded knife or pistol in your deeds 
of darkness, yet, in the day when John Wilkes 
Booth and Antony Probst come to judgment, 
you will have on your brow the brand of mur- 
derer. 

Hear me when I repeat, that the practices of 
high life ought not to make sin in your eyes 
seem tolerable. God is no respecter of per- 
sons ; and robes and rags will stand on the 
same platform in the day when the archangel, 
with one foot on the sea and the other on the 
land, swears, by Him that liveth forever and 
ever, that Time shall be no more. 

O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a 
life of purity, standing upright where thousands 
of other young men fall. You will move in 
honorable circles all your days ; and some old 
friend of your father will meet you and say : 
il My son, how glad I am to see you look so 
well. Just like your father, for all the world. I 
thought you would turn out well when I used 



238 The Abominations. 

to hold you on my knee. Do you ever hear 
from the old folks ? " 

After a while you yourself will be old, and 
lean quite heavily on your cane, and take short 
steps, and hold the book off to the other side of 
the light. And* men will take off their hats in 
your presence. Your body, unharmed by early 
indulgences, will get weaker, only as the sleepy 
child gets more and more unable to hold up its 
head, and falls back into its mother's lap : so 
you shall lay yourself down into the arms of the 
Christian's tomb, and on the slab that marks the 
place will be chiselled : " Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God." 

But here is a young man who takes the other 
route. The voices of uncleanness charm him 
away. He reads bad books. Lives in vicious 
circles. Loses the glow from his cheek, the 
sparkle from his eye, and the purity from his 
soul. The good shun him. Down he goes, 
little by little. They who knew him when he 
came to town, while yet lingering on his head 
was a pure mother's blessing, and on his lip the 
dew of a pure sister's kiss, now pass him, and 
say, " What an awful wreck ! " His eye blear- 



House of Blackness of Darkness, 239 

ed with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised 
in the grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with 
evil indulgences. Look out what you say to 
him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower 
down and lower down, until, outcast of God 
and man, he lies in the alms-Jiouse, a blotch of 
loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls 
out for God ; and then for more drink. Now 
he prays ; now curses. Now laughs as fiends 
laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then 
runs both hands through the shock of hair that 
hangs about his head — like the mane of a wild 
beast. Then shivers — until the cot shakes — 
with unutterable terror. Then, with uplifted 
fist, fights back the devils, or clutches the 
serpents that seem winding him in their coil. 
Then asks for water, which is instantly con- 
sumed by his cracked lips. Going his round 
some morning, the surgeon finds him dead. 
Straighten the limbs. You need not try to 
comb out or shove back the matted locks. 
Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two 
men will carry it down to the wagon at the door. 
With chalk, write on the top of the box the 
name of the exhausted libertine. 



240 The Abominations. 

Do you know who it is ? 

That is you, O man, if, yielding to the temp- 
tations to an impure life, you go out, and 
perish. 

There is a way that seemeth bright, and fair, 
and beautiful ; but the end thereof is BLACK- 
NESS of Darkness Forever. 



THE GUN THAT KICKS OVER THE 
MAN WHO SHOOTS IT OFF. 

Blasphemy is a crime that aims at God, 
but does its chief harm to the one that fires 
it off. 

So I compare it to a piece of imperfect fire- 
arms to which the marksman puts his eye, and, 
pulling the trigger, by the rebound finds himself 
in the dust. 

I tell you a story, Oriental and marvellous. 
History speaks of the richest man in all the 
East. He had camels, oxen, asses, sheep, and 
what would make anv man rich even if he had 



nothing else — seven sons and three daughters. 
It was the custom of this man's children to 
have family reunions. One day he is at home, 
thinking of his darling children, who are keep- 
ing banquet at their elder brother's house. 
Yonder comes a messenger in hot haste, evi- 
dently, from his looks, bearing evil tidings. 
Recovering himself sufficiently to speak, he 

says: "The oxen and the asses have been 
ii 



242 The Abominations. 

captured by a foraging party of Sabeans, and 
all the servants are butchered except myself." 
Another messenger is coming. He says that 
the sheep and the shepherds have been struck 
by lightning. Another messenger is coming. 
He says that the Chaldeans have come and 
captured the camels, and killed all but himself. 
Another messenger, who says: "While thy 
sons and daughters were at the feast, a hurri- 
cane struck the corner of the tent, and they are 
all dead ! " But his misfortunes are not yet 
completed. The old man is smitten with the 
elephantiasis, or black kprosy. Tumors from 
head to foot ; face distorted ; forehead ridged 
with offensive tubercles; eyelashes fall out; 
nostrils excoriated ; voice destroyed ; intoler- 
able exhalation from the whole body ; until, with 
none to dress his sores, he sits down in the 
ashes, with nothing but broken pieces of pot- 
tery to use in the surgery of his wounds. At 
this point, when he needed all consolation 
and encouragement, his wife comes to him, 
and says, virtually : " This is intolerable ! 
Our property gone, our children slain, and 
now this loathsome, disgusting disease is upon 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 243 

you. Why don't you swear ? Curse God 
and die ! * 

But profanity would not have removed one 
tumor from his agonized body ; would not have 
brought to his door one of the captured camels ; 
would not have restored any one of the dead 
children. Swearing would have made the pain 
more unbearable,, the pauperism into which 
he had plunged more distressing, the bereave- 
ment more excruciating. 

And yet, from the swearing and blasphemy 
with which our land is cursed, one .would think 
there were some great advantage to be reaped 
from the practice. There is to-day in all our 
land no more prevalent custom, and no more 
God-defying abomination, than profane swear- 
ing. You can hardly walk our streets five 
minutes without having your ears stung and 
your sensibilities shocked. The drayman swear- 
ing at his horse ; the tinman at his solder ; the 
sewing-girl imprecating her tangled thread ; the 
bricklayer cursing at his trowel ; the carpenter 
at. his plane ; the sailor at the tackling ; the 
merchant at the customer ; the customer at the 
merchant; the printer at the miserable proof- 



244 ^Tk& Abominations. 

sheet ; the accountant at the troublesome line 
of figures ; — swearing in the cellar and in the 
loft, before the counter and behind the counter, 
in the shop and on the street, in low saloon 
and fashionable bar-room. Children swear, 
men swear, ladies (!) swear. Profanity from 
the lowest haunt calling upon the Almighty, to 
the fashionable " O Lord!" of the glittering 
drawing-room. 

This whole country is blasted with the evil. 
Coming from the West, a gentleman sat behind 
two persons conversing. Profanities were so 
frequent in the conversation of the two persons 
in front, that the gentleman behind took out his 
pencil and paper and made a record. The 
profanities filled several sheets in the course of 
two days, at the close of which time the gentle- 
man handed the manuscript to the persons 
conversing. The men said : " Is it possible 
that we have uttered so many profanities in the 
course of two days ? " The gentleman said : 
"Yes." — "Then," said one of the men, "I 
shall never swear again." 

I make no abstract discussion. I hate ab- 
stractions. I had rather come right out and 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 245 

have a talk with you about a habit that you 
admit to be wrong. This habit has grown from 
the fact that the young often think it an evi- 
dence of manliness. There are thousands of 
boys and youth who indulge in it. I hear 
children along the street, but just able to walk, 
practising this iniquity. They cannot talk 
straight, but they get enough distinctness to 
let you know that they are damning their own 
souls and the souls of others. Oh ! it is horrible 
to see a little child, the first time it lifts its feet 
to walk, set them down on the burning pave- 
ment of hell ! Between sixteen and twenty 
years of age there is apt to come a time when a 
young man is as much ashamed of not being 
able to deliver an oath as he is of the dizziness 
that comes from his first cigar. He has his 
hat and coat and boots of the right pattern, 
and there is but one thing more now to bring 
him into fashion , and that is a capacity to 

1 

swear. 

So there are some of our young men sur- 
rounded by an atmosphere of profanities. 
Oaths sit on their lips, they roll under their 
tongues, and nest in the shock of hair. In 



246 The Abominations. 

elegant drawing-rooms they abstain from such 
utterances, but fill ckib-room and street with 
their immoralities of speech. You suggest the 
wrongfulness of the habit, and they thrust their 
finger in the sleeve of their vest, and swagger, 
and say: "Who cares!" They have no 
regard for God, but great respect for the ladies. 
Ah ! there is no manliness in that. 

The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do 
is to swear. This habit is becoming more and 
more prevalent because of the immorality of 
parents and employers. There are very many 
fathers who indulge in this habit. They feel 
moved to utter themselves in this way, but first 
look around to see if their children are present. 
They have no idea that their children know 
anything about it. The probability is that if 
you swear, your children swear. They were in 
the next room and heard you, or somebody 
told them about your habit. Your child is 
practising to do just as you do. He is laughed 
at, at first, for his awkwardness, but after 
a while he will swear as well as you. 

Then look at the example of master carpen- 
ters, masons, roofers, and hatters. You know 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 247 

how some of you go around the building, and, 
when the work of your journeyman and subor- 
dinates does not please you, what do you say ? 
It is not praying, is it ? Forthwith, your jour- 
neymen and subordinates learn the habit. 
Hence our hat-shops, and house-scaffoldings, 
and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, 
and cellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies. 

Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth 
fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to swear, it 
can be overlooked in men who have merely 
their day's wages. Because they are poor must 
they be denied this One luxury ? 

This habit becomes more prevalent because 
of the infirmities of temper. There are many 
men who, when at peace, are most fastidious of 
speech, but when aroused into the violence of 
passion, blaze with imprecation. The Oriental's 
wife spoken of would not have liked her husband 
to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but 
now that the cameis are gone, and the sheep 
are gone, and the property is gone, and the 
boils have come, she says : " Why don't you 
swear? Curse God and die ! " Others, all the 
year round, have not the froth of profanity 



248 The Abominations. 

wiped from their lips, but try to expend all 
the fury of a twelvemonth in one red-hot para- 
graph of five minutes. A man apologized for 
his occasional swearing by saying that, once in 
a year, in this way he cleared himself out. 
There are men who have no control of their 
blasphemous utterances, who want us to send 
them to Congress. Others have blasphemed in 
senatorial places, pretending afterwards that it 
was a mere rhetorical flourish. 

Many fall into this habit through the frequent 
use of what are called by-words. I suppose 
that all have favorite phrases of this kind in 
which there is no harm ; but a profusion of this 
style of speech often ends in bald profanity. It 
is, "I declare!" ''My stars!" "Mercy on 
me ! " " Good gracious ! " ft By George ! " 
" By Jove ! " and " By heavens ! " and no harm 
is intended ; but it is a very easy transition 
from this kind of talk to that which is positively 
obnoxious. The English language is magnifi- 
cent, and capable of expressing every shade of 
feeling and every degree of energy and zeal ; 
and there is no need that we take to ourselves 
unlawful words. If you are happy, Noah Web- 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 249 

ster offers to your tongue ten thousand epithets 
in which you may express your exhilaration ; 
and if you are righteously indignant, there are 
in his dictionary whole armories of denunciation 
and scorn, sarcasm and irony, caricature and 
wrath. Utter yourself against some meanness 
or hypocrisy in all the blasphemies that ever 
smoked up from perdition, and I will go on to 
denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy 
with a hundred-fold more stress and vehemency 
in words across w r hich no slime has ever trailed, 
and through which no infernal fires have shot 
their forked tongues, — words pure, innocent, 
all-impressive, God-honored, Anglo-Saxon, — in 
which Milton sang, and Bunyan dreamed, and 
Shakespeare wrote. 

But. whatever be the source of this habit, it is 
on the increase. At sixteen, boys swear with 
as much facility as the grandfather did at sixty. 
Our streets are cursed by it from end to end. 
Our hotels, from morning until midnight, re- 
sound with it. Men curse on the way to the 
bar to get their morning dram ; curse the news- 
boy who cries the paper ; curse the breakfast 
for being cold ; curse at the bank, and curse at 



250 The Abominations. 

the store ; curse on the way to bed ; curse at 
the stone against which they strike their foot ; 
and curse at the splinter that gets under the 
nail. If you do not know that this is so, it is 
because your ear has been hardened by the per- 
petual din of profanities that are enough to 
bring down upon any city the hurricane of fire 
that consumed Sodom. 

The habit is creeping up into the higher cir- 
cles. Every woman despises flat and unvarnish- 
ed imprecations ; but in the most elevated circles 
there are women who swear without knowing 
it. They have read Bulwer, and George Sand, 
and the exaggerated style of some of our im- 
ported as well as home-made periodical litera- 
ture, until they do not actually know what is 
decency of speech. With fairy fan to their lips 
they utter their oaths, and, under chandeliers 
which discover not the faintest blush, recklessly 
speak the holiest of names. This is helped on 
by the second glass of wine, that is perfectly 
harmless ; and though no one dare charge her, 
being so finely dressed, with anything like in- 
toxication, yet there comes a glassiness to the 
eye, and a glow to the cheek, and a style of 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 251 

speech to the tongue that were not known be- 
fore she took the second glass that was perfectly 
harmless. 

One wild, terrific wave of blasphemy is sweep- 
ing over the land. See the effects of this wide- 
spread profanity in the increasing perjury. If 
men in ordinary conversation so commonly use 
the name of God, is it wonderful that in the 
jury-box, and in the alderman's office, and in 
the custom-house so many swear falsely ? No- 
tice the way an oath is administered. They 
toss the Bible at a man, and in the most trivial 
way say : " So help you God — kiss the book." 
I suppose enough lies are every day told in the 
custom-house to sink it. Smuggling, although 
it be done against positive oath, is in some cir- 
cles considered a grand joke ; and you say some 
day to your friend, " How can you sell those 
goods so cheaply ? " and your friend says with 
an eye-twinkle, "The Custom-House tariff was 
not as high on those things as it might have 
been." Men more easily break their solemn 
oaths than formerly. What strange verdicts 
juries do sometimes render ! What peculiar 
charges judges do sometimes make ! What 



252 The Abominations. 

unaccountable slowness sheriffs and their depu- 
ties sometimes exhibit in the execution of their 
writs ! What erratic railroad enterprises sud- 
denly pass at our State capitals ! What won- 
derful changes Congress makes in the tariff 
on liquors ! 

What is an oath ? Anything solemn ? Any- 
thing appealing to the Almighty ? Anything 
stupendous in man's history ? No ! It is 
" kissing the book ! " In a land where the 
name of God so often becomes the foot-ball of 
what are called respectable circles, how can we 
expect that it can excite any veneration when, 
in the presence of county clerk, or alderman, or 
judge, or legislative assembly, it is used in sol- 
emn adjuration? This habit lowers, bedwarfs, 
and destroys the entire moral nature. You 
might as well expect to raise harvests and vine- 
yards on the side of belching Stromboli as to 
have any great excellency grow upon your soul 
when it so often overflows with the scoriae of 
this awful propensity. You will never swear 
yourself up. You will swear yourself down. 
The Mohammedans, when they find a slip of pa- 
per they cannot read, put it aside, for fear the 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 253 

name of God is on it. That, you say, is one 
extreme. We go to the other. 

You are willing to acknowledge this a miser- 
able habit, and would like to have some recipe 
for its cure. 

Reflect much upon the uselessness of the 
habit. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy 
load ? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? 
Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a 
customer ? Did they ever collect a bad debt ? 
Did they ever cure a toothache ? Did they ever 
stop a twinge of the gout ? Did they ever save 
you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any 
great enterprise ? or enable you to gain a posi- 
tion, or to accomplish anything that you ever 
wanted to do ? How much did you ever make 
by swearing ? What, in all the round of a life- 
time of profanity, did you ever gain by the 
habit ? 

Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses 
God's indignation. The Bible reiterates, in 
paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after 
chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphe- 
mers are accursed now, and are to be forever 
miserable. There is no iniquity that has been 



254 The Abominations. 

so often visited with the immediate curse of 
God. 

At New Brunswick, a young man was stand- 
ing on the railroad track blaspheming. The 
cars passed, and he was found on the track with 
his tongue cut out. People could not under- 
stand how, with comparatively little bruising of 
the rest of his body, his tongue could have been 
cut out. Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told 
a falsehood, and said that he hoped, if what he 
said was not true, God would strike him dead. 
He instantly fell. There was no longer any 
pulse. There was no reason for his death, ex- 
cept that he asked God to strike him dead, and 
God did it. In Scotland a club was formed, 
in which the members competed as to which 
could use the most horrid oaths. The man who 
succeeded best in the infamy was made presi- 
dent of the club. His tongue began to swell. 
It protruded from his mouth. He could not 
draw it in. He died within three days. Phy- 
sicians were astounded. There was nothing like 
it in all the books. What was the matter with 
him ? He cursed God, and died ! Near Cats- 
kill, N. Y., during a thunder-storm, a group of 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 255 

men were standing in a blacksmith-shop. There 
came a crash of thunder, and the men were 
startled. One man said that he was not afraid ; 
and he made a wager that he dared go out in 
front of the shop, while the lightnings were fly- 
ing, and dare the Almighty. He went out ; 
shook his fist at the heavens, crying, " Strike, 
if you dare ! " Instantly a thunder-bolt struck 
him. He was dead. He cursed God, and died ! 

God will not abide this sin. He will not let it , 
escape. There is a kind of manifold paper by 
which a man may, with a heavy pencil, write 
upon a dozen sheets at once — the writing going 
down through all the sheets. So every oath 
and blasphemy goes through, and is written in- 
delibly on every leaf of God's remembrance. 
Ah ! how much our Father bears ! Can you 
make an estimate of how many blasphemies will 
roll up from the streets and saloons of our cities 
to-night ? If you go out and look up you can- 
not see them. There will be no trail of fire on 
the sky. But the air is full of them. The 
name of Christ is not so often spoken in worship 
as in derision. God will be cursed to-night by 
hundreds of lips. The grog-shops will curse 



256 The Abominations. 

him. The houses of shame will curse him. 
Five Points will curse him. Bedford street will 
curse him. Chestnut street will curse him. 
Madison square will curse him. Beacon street 
will curse him. Every street in all our cities 
will curse him. 

This blasphemy is an abomination that no 
words of mine can describe. And God hears it. 
They curse His name. They curse his Sabbath. 
They curse his Bible. They curse his people. 
They curse his Only Begotten Son. Yes ; they 
swear by the name of Jesus ! It makes my hair 
rise, and my "flesh creep, and my blood chill, 
and my breath catch, and my foot halt. 

Dionysius had a cave where men were incar- 
cerated. At the top of the cave was an aper- 
ture to which he could put his ear, and could 
hear every sigh, every groan, every word of 
the inmates. This world is so arranged that 
all its voices go up to heaven. God puts down 
his ear and hears every word of praise offered, 
and every word of blasphemy spoken. 

Our cities must come to judgment. All these 
oaths must be answered for. They die on the 
air, but they have an eternal echo. Listen for 



The Gtm that Kicks, Etc. 257 

the echo. It rolls back from the ages to come. 
Listen : — " All blasphemers shall have their place 
in the lake that burnetii with fire and brim- 
stone" Some have thought that a lost soul in 
the future world will do that which it was most 
prone to do in this world. If so, then think of 
a man blaspheming God through all eternity ! 

This habit grows upon a man, until at last it 
pushes him off forever. I saw a man die with 
an oath between his teeth. Voltaire rose from 
his dying pillow, and, supposing that he saw 
Christ in the room, cried out, "Crush the 
wretch ! " A celebrated officer during the last 
war fell mortally wounded, and the only word- 
he sent to his wife was : " Tell her I f ught like 
hell !" 

There are thousands of men who are having 
all their moral nature pulled down by the fiery 
fingers of this habit. At last, pinched, shriv- 
elled, and consumed, they will get down on 
their beds to die, and at the step of the doctor 
in the hall, or the shutting of the front door, 
they will start up, thinking they hear the 
sepulchral gates creak open. 

Who is this God that you should maltreat his 



258 The Abominations. 

name ? Has he been haunting you, starving 
you, or freezing you all your life ? No ! He 
is your Father, patient and loving. He rocked 
your cradle with blessings, from the time you 
were born. He clothes you now, and always 
has clothed you. You never had a sickness 
but he was sorry for you. He has brooded 
over you with wings of love. He has tried to 
press you to his heart of kindness and compas- 
sion. He wants to forgive you. He wants to 
help you. He wants to make you happy. He 
watched last night over your pillow while you 
slept. He will watch to-night. He was your 
father's God, and your mother's. He has 
housed them safe from the blast, and he wants 
to shelter you. Do you trifle with his name ? 
Do you smite him in the face ? Do you thrust 
him back by your imprecations ? 

Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men 
swearing by ? Who is he ? Some destroyer, 
that they so treat his name ? What foul thing 
hath he done, that our great cities speak his 
name in thousand-voiced jeer and contempt ? 
Who is he ? A Lamb, whose blood simmered 
in the fires of sacrifice to save you. A Broth- 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 259 

er, who put down his crown of glory that you 
might take it up. For many years he has been 
striving, night and day, to win your affections. 
There is nothing in heaven that he is not will- 
ing to give you. He came with blistered feet 
and streaming eyes, with aching head and 
broken heart to relieve you. On the craft of a 
doomed humanity he pushed out into the sea, 
to pick you off the rock. Who will ever again 
malign his name ? Is there a hand that will 
ever again be lifted to wound him ? If so, let 
that hand, blood-dipped, be lifted now. Which 
one of my readers will ever again utter his 
sacred name in imprecation ? If any, now let 
them speak. Not one ! Not one ! 

One summer among the New England hills 
there was an evening memorable for storm and 
darkness. The clouds, which had been all day 
gathering, at last unlimbered their batteries. 
The Housatonic, that flows in silence save as 
the paddles of pleasure-parties rattle in the row- 
lock, was lashed into foam and its waves stag- 
gered, not knowing where to lay themselves. 
The hills jarred at the rumbling of God's 
chariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the 



260 The Abo?ninations. 

cattle to the bars, and beat against the win- 
dow-pane as if to dash it in. The corn-fields 
crouched in the fury, and the ripened grain- 
fields threw their crowns of gold at the feet of 
the storm-king. After the night shut in, it was 
a double night. Its black mantle was rent with 
the lightnings, and into its locks were twisted 
the leaves of uprooted oaks, and shreds of 
canvas torn from the masts of the beached 
shipping. It was such a night as makes you 
thank God for shelter, and bids you open the 
door to let in even the spaniel howling outside 
with the terror. We went to sleep under the 
full blast of heaven's great orchestra, and the 
forests with uplifted voice, in choiring hosts that 
. filled all the side of the mountains, praising 
the Lord. 

We waked not until the fingers of the sunny 
morn touched our eyelids. We looked out and 
Housatonic slept as quiet as a baby's dream. 
Pillars of white cloud set up along the heav- 
ens looked like the castles of the blest, built 
for hierarchs of heaven on the beach of the 
azure sea. The trees sparkled as though there 
had been some great grief in heaven, and 



« 



The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 261 

each leaf had been God-appointed to catch an 
angel's tear. It seemed as if God our Father 
had looked down upon earth, his wayward 
child, and stooped to her tear-wet cheek, and 
kissed it. 

Even so will the darkness of our country's 
crime and suffering be lifted. God will roll 
back the night of storm, and bring in the morn- 
ing of joy. Its golden light will gild the city 
spire, and strike the forests of Maine, and 
tinge the masts of Mobile ; and with one end 
resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other 
on the Pacific coast, God will spring a great 
rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting 
covenant that the land shall never again be 
deluged with crime. 



LIES : WHITE AND BLACK. 

There are ten thousand ways of telling a lie. 
A man's entire life may be a falsehood, while 
with his lips he may not once directly falsify. 
There are those who state what is positively 
untrue, but afterwards say, "may be," softly. 
These departures from the truth are called 
" white lies ; " but there is really no such thing 
as a white lie. The whitest lie that was ever 
told was as black as perdition. No inventory 
of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this 
gigantic abomination. There are men, high 
in Church and State, actually useful, self-deny- 
ing, and honest in many things, who, upon 
certain subjects, and in certain spheres, are not 
at all to be depended upon for veracity. In- 
deed, there are multitudes of men who have 
their notions of truthfulness so thoroughly per- 
verted, that they do not know when they are 
lying. With many it is a cultivated sin ; with 
some it seems a natural infirmity. I have 
known people who seemed to have been born 



L ies : Wh ite and Black. 263 

liars. The falsehoods of their lives extended 
from cradle to grave. Prevarication, misrepre- 
sentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared 
in their first utterances and was as natural to 
them as any of their infantile diseases, and was 
a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. 
But many have been placed in circumstances 
where this tendency has day by day, and hour 
by hour, been called to larger development. 
They have gone from attainment to attainment, 
and from class to class, until they have become 
regularly graduated liars. 

The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. 
They hang pendent from the chandeliers of our 
finest residences ; they crowd the shelves of 
some of our merchant princes ; they fill the 
side-walk from curb-stone to brown-stone facing. 
They cluster around the mechanic's hammer, 
and blossom from the end of the merchant's 
yard-stick, and sit in the doors of churches. 
Some call them "fiction." Some style them 
"fabrication." You might say that they were 
subterfuge, disguise, delusion, romance, eva- 
sion, pretence, fable, deception, misrepresenta- 
tion ; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be 



264 The Abominations. 

gained by the hiding of a God-defying outrage 
under a lexicographer's blanket, I shall chiefly 
call them what my father taught me to call 
them — lies. 

I shall divide them into agricultural, mercan- 
tile, mechanical, and ecclesiastical lies ; leaving 
those that are professional, social, and political 
for some other chapter. 

First, then, I will speak of those that are 
more particularly agricultural. There is some- 
thing in the perpetual presence of natural 
objects to make a man pure. The trees never 
issue " false stock." Wheat-fields are always 
honest. Rye and oats never move out in the 
night, not paying for the place they have 
occupied. Corn shocks never make false as- 
signments. Mountain brooks are always u cur- 
rent." The gold on the grain is never counter- 
feit. The sunrise never flaunts in false colors. 
The dew sports only genuine diamonds. 

Taking farmers as a class, I believe they are 
truthful, and fair in dealing, and kind-hearted. 
But the regions surrounding our cities do not 
always send this sort of men to our markets. 
Day by day there creak through our streets, 



L ies : Wh ite and Black. 265 

and about the market-houses, farm wagons that 
have not an honest spoke in their wheels, or a 
truthful rivet from tongue to tail-board. Dur- 
ing the last few years there have been times 
when domestic economy has foundered on the 
farmer's firkin. Neither high taxes, nor the 
high price of dry-goods, nor the exorbitancy of 
labor, could excuse much that the city has wit- 
nessed in the behavior of the yeomanry. By 
the quiet firesides of Westchester and Bucks 
counties I hope there may be seasons of deep 
reflection and hearty repentance. 

Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great 
cities as given up to fraud and every form of 
unrighteousness ; but our cities do not absorb all 
the abominations. Our citizens have learned 
the importance of not always trusting to the size 
and style of apples in the, top of a farmer's bar- 
rel, as an indication of what may- be found 
farther down. Many of our people are accus- 
tomed to watch to see how correctly a bushel of 
beets is measured ; and there are not many hon- 
est milk-cans. Deceptions do not all cluster 
around city halls. When our cities sit down 

and weep over their sins, all the surrounding 
12 



266 The Abominations. 

counties ought to come in and weep with 
them. 

There is often hostility on the part of produ- 
cers against traders, as though the man who 
raises the corn were necessarily more honorable 
than the grain dealer, who pours it into his 
mammoth bin. There ought to be no such hos- 
tility. The occupation of one is as necessary as 
that of the other. Yet producers often think it 
no wrong to snatch away from the trader ; and 
they say to the bargain-maker, " You get your 
money easy." Do they get it easy ? Let those 
who in the quiet field and barn get their living 
exchange places with those who stand to-day 
amid the excitements of commercial life, and 
see if they find it so very easy. While the 
farmer goes to sleep with the assurance that his 
corn and barley will be growing all the night, 
moment by moment adding to his revenue, the 
merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that 
that moment his cargo may be broken on the 
rocks, or damaged by the wave that sweeps 
clear across the hurricane deck ; or that the gold 
gamblers may, that very hour, be plotting some 
monetary revolution, or the burglars be prying 



Lies: White and Black. 267 

open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or 
his landlord raising the rent, or the fires kind- 
ling on the block that contains all his estate. 
Easy / is it ? God help the merchants ! It is 
hard to have the palms of the hand blistered 
with out-door work ; but a more dreadful pro- 
cess when, through mercantile anxieties, the 
brain is consumed ! 

In the next place we notice mercantile lies, 
those before the counter and behind the counter. 
I will not attempt to specify the different forms 
of commercial falsehood. There are merchants 
who excuse themselves for deviation from truth- 
fulness because of what they call commercial 
custom. In other words, the multiplication and 
universality of a sin turns it into a virtue. 
There have been large fortunes gathered where 
there was not one drop of unrequited toil in the 
wine ; not one spark of bad temper flashing 
from the bronze bracket ; not one drop of 
needle-woman's heart-blood in the crimson 
plush ; while there are other great establishments 
in which there is not one door-knob, not one 
brick, not one trinket, not one thread of lace, 
but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What 



268 The Abominations. 

wonder if, some day, a hand of toil that had 
been wrung, and worn out, and blistered until 
the skin came off, should be placed against the 
elegant wall-paper, leaving its mark of blood, — 
four fingers and a thumb ; or that, some day, 
walking the halls, there should be a voice ac- 
costing the occupant, saying, Six cents for 
making a shirt ; and, flying the room, another 
voice should say, Twelve cents for an army 
blanket ; and the man should try to sleep at 
night, but ever and anon be aroused, until, 
getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, 
Who's there ? 

There are thousands of fortunes made in 
commercial spheres that are throughout right- 
eous. God will let his favor rest upon every 
scroll, every pictured wall, every traceried 
window ; and the joy that flashes from the 
lights, and showers from the music, and dances 
in the children's quick feet, pattering through 
the hall, will utter the congratulation of men 
and the approval of God. 

A merchant can, to the last item, be thorough- 
ly honest. There is never any need of false- 
hood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour 






L ies .: Wh ite and Black. 269 

by hour, utter what they know to be wrong. 
You say that you are selling at less than cost. 
If so, then it is right to say it. But did that 
thing cost you less than what you ask for it ? 
If not, then you have lied. You say that 
article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it ? 
If so, then all right. If it did not, then you 
have lied. Suppose you are a purchaser. You 
are " beating down " the goods. You say that 
that article, for which five dollars is charged, is 
not worth more than four. Is it worth no more 
than four dollars ? Then all right. If it be 
worth more, and, for the sake of getting it for 
less than its value, you wilfully depreciate it, 
you have lied. Yon may call it a sharp trade. 
The recording angel- writes it down on the 
ponderous tomes of eternity — "Mr. So and So, 
merchant on Water street, or in Eighth street, 
or in State street ; or Mrs. So and So, keep- 
ing house on Beacon street, or on Madison 
avenue, or Rittenhouse square, told one lie." 
You may consider it insignificant, because relat- 
ing to an insignificant purchase. You would 
despise the man who would falsify in regard to 
some great matter, in which the city or the 



270 The Abominations. 

whole country was concerned ; but this is only 
a box of buttons, or a row of pins, or a case of 
needles. Be not deceived. The article pur- 
chased may be so small you can put it in your 
vest pocket, but the sin was bigger than the 
Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will re- 
verberate through all the mountains of eternity. 

You throw out on your counter some speci- 
mens of handkerchiefs. Your customer asks, 
" Is that all silk ? no cotton in it?" You an- 
swer, "It is all silk." Was it all silk? If 
so, all right. But was it partly cotton? Then 
you have lied. Moreover, you lost by the 
falsehood. The customer, though he may live 
at Lynn, or Doylestown, or Poughkeepsie, will 
find out that you defrauded him, and next 
spring, when he again comes shopping, he will 
look at your sign and say: "I will not try 
there. That is the place where I got that hand- 
kerchief." So that, by that one dishonest 
bargain, you picked your own pocket and in- 
sulted the Almighty. 

Would you dare to make an estimate of how 
many falsehoods in trade were yesterday told 
by hardware men, and clothiers, and fruit- 



Lies: White and Black. 271 

dealers, and dry-goods establishments, and im- 
porters, and jewellers, and lumbermen, and 
coal-merchants, and stationers, and tobacco- 
nists ? Lies about saddles, about buckles, 
about ribbons, about carpets, about gloves, 
about coats, about shoes, about hats, about 
watches, about carriages, about books, — about 
everything. In the name of the Lord Al- 
mighty, I arraign commercial falsehoods as 
one of the greatest of abominations in city 
and town. 

In the next place, I notice mechanical lies. 
There is no class of men who administer more 
to the welfare of the city than artisans. To 
their hand we must look for the building that 
shelters us, for the garments that clothe us, for 
the car that carries us. They wield a wide- 
spread influence. There is much derision of 
what is called " muscular Christianity ; " but in 
the latter day of the world's prosperity, I think 
that the Christian will be muscular. We have 
the right to expect of those stalwart men of toil 
the highest possible integrity. Many of them 
answer all our expectations, and stand at the 
front of religious and philanthropic enterprises. 



272 The Abominations. 

But this class, like the others that I have named, 
has in it those who lack in the element of 
veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In 
times when the demand for labor is great, it is 
impossible to meet the demands of the public, or 
do work with that promptness and perfection 
that would at other times be possible. But 
there are mechanics whose word cannot be 
trusted at any time. No man has a right to 
promise more work than he can do. There are 
mechanics who say that they will come Monday, 
but they do not come until Wednesday. You 
put work in their hands that they tell you shall 
be completed in ten days, but it is thirty. 
There have been houses built of which it mightbe 
said that every nail driven, every foot of plas- 
tering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every 
shingle hammered, every brick mortared, could 
tell of falsehood connected therewith. There 
are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces 
of work who have not the time or strength 
to do more than five or six pieces ; but by pro- 
mises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings 
within their own grasp. This is what they call 
" nursing" the job. 



L ies : Wh ite and Black. 273 

How much wrong to his soul and insult to 
God a mechanic would save, if he promised 
only so much as he expected to be able to 
do. Society has no right to ask of you impos- 
sibilities. 

You cannot always calculate correctly, and 
you may fail because you cannot get the help 
that you anticipate. But now I am speaking of 
the wilful making of promises that you know 
you cannot keep. Did you say that that shoe 
should be mended, that coat repaired, those 
brick laid, that harness sewed, that door 
grained, that spout fixed, or that window 
glazed, by Saturday, knowing that you would 
neither be able to do it yourself nor get any 
one else to do it? Then, before God and man, 
you are a liar. You may say that it makes no 
particular difference, and that if you had told 
the truth you would have lost the job, and that 
people expect to be disappointed. But that 
excuse will not answer. There is a voice of 
thunder rolling among the drills, and planes, 
and shoe-lasts, and shears, which says: "All 
liars shall have their place in the lake that burn- 
etii with fire and brimstone." 



274 The Abominations. 

I next notice ecclesiastical lies ; that is, false- 
hoods told for the purpose of advancing 
churches and sects, or for the purpose of de- 
pleting them. There is no use in asking many 
a Calvinist what an Arminian believes, for he 
will be apt to . tell you that the Arminian be- 
lieves that a man can convert himself; or to 
ask the Arminian what the Calvinist believes, 
for he will tell you that the Calvinist believes 
that God made some men just to damn them. 
There is no need of asking a pedo-Baptist what 
a Baptist believes, for he will be apt to say that 
the Baptist believes immersion to be positively 
necessary to salvation. It is almost impossible 
for one denomination of Christians, without pre- 
judice or misrepresentation, to state the sen- 
timent of an opposing sect. If a man hates Pres- 
byterians, and you ask him what Presbyterians 
believe, he will tell you that they believe that 
there are infants in hell a span long. 

It is strange also how individual churches will 
sometimes make misstatements about other 
individual churches. It is especially so in re- 
gard to falsehoods told with reference to pros- 
perous enterprises. As long as a church is fee- 



Lies: White and Black. 275 

ble, and the singing is discordant, and the min- 
ister, through the poverty of the church, must 
go with threadbare coat, and here and there a 
worshipper sits in the end of a pew having all 
the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of 
other churches will say, " What a pity ! " But, 
let a great day of prosperity come, and even 
ministers of the gospel, who ought to be rejoiced 
at the largeness and extent of the work, de- 
nounce, and misrepresent, and falsify, — starting 
the suspicion, in regard to themselves, that the 
reason they do not like the corn is because it is 
not ground in their own mill. 

How long before we shall learn to be fair in 
our religious criticisms ! The keenest jealousies 
on earth are church jealousies. The field of 
Christian work is so large that there is no need 
that our hoe-handles hit. 

May God extirpate from the world ecclesi- 
astical lies, commercial lies, mechanical lies, 
and agricultural lies, and make every man, the 
world over, to speak truth with his neighbor ! 



A GOOD TIME COMING. 

As on some bitter cold night, while thresh- 
ing our hands about to keep our thumbs from 
freezing, we have looked up and seen the north- 
ern lights blazing along the sky, the windows 
of heaven illumined at the news of some great 
victory, so from beyond this bitter night of 
abomination a brightness strikes through from 
the other side. 

I have thought that it would be well, in 
these chapters on the sins of the times, to lift 
before you a vision of what our cities will be 
when the work of good men shall have been 
concluded and our population redeemed. I 
doubt not that sometimes men have shut this 
book, thinking that the gigantic wrongs we 
depict may never be discomfited. Lest you 
be utterly disheartened, I will show you that 
we fight in a war in which we will be com- 
pletely victorious. This is to be no drawn 
battle ; for, when it is done, the result will not 
be disputed by a man on earth, or an angel in 



A Good Time Coming. 277 

heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have 
captured every one of the strongholds of dark- 
ness. You and I will live to see the day when 
gambling-hells will be changed into places of 
Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept 
and garnished for the residence of the purest 
home circles. 

Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the 
airs he composed ; but when the song of uni- 
versal disenthralment arises, and white Circas- 
sian stands up by the side of black Ethiopian, 
and tropical groves wave to the Lebanon 
cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it 
and see it, and hear it. If gone from earth, 
we will be allowed to come out on the hills and 
look. 

We do not talk about impossibilities. We 
do not propose a medicine about which we 
have to say that it will "kill or cure." For 
this balm that oozes from the tree of heaven 
will inevitably cure. 

I remark that this coming time of municipal 
elevation will be a time of financial prosperity. 
Many seem to suppose that when the world's 
better days come, the people will forsake their 



278 The A bom (nations. 

industries, and give themselves to perpetual 
psalm-singing, and, being all absorbed in 
spiritual things, will become reckless as to dress 
and dwelling ; and very rigid laws then govern- 
ing the commercial world, all enterprise and 
speculation will cease, and all hilarity be strick- 
en out of the social circle. There is no war- 
rant for such an absurd anticipation. I suppose 
that when society is reconstructed, where there 
is now, in the course of a year, one fortune 
made, there will be a hundred fortunes made. 
Every one knows that the commercial world 
thrives in proportion as there is confidence be- 
tween man and man ; and the extirpation of 
all double-dealing and fraud from society will 
increase this confidence, and hence greater 
prosperity. The heavy commercial disasters 
that have smitten this land were the work of 
godless speculators and infamous stock-gam- 
blers. It is crime that is the mightiest foe to 
business ; but when the right shall hurl back 
into ruin the plots of bad men, and purify the 
commercial code, and thunder down fraudulent 
establishments, and put into the hands of 
honest men the keys of commercial prosper- 



\ 



A Good Time Coming. 279 

ity, blessed will be the bargain -makers of the 
city. 

That will be a prosperous time, for taxes 
will be a mere nothing. Every style of busi- 
ness is taxed now to the utmost. City taxes, 
county taxes, State taxes, United States taxes, 
license taxes, manufacturing taxes, stamp taxes, 
— taxes ! taxes ! taxes ! Our citizens must 
make a small fortune every year to meet these 
exactions. What hand fastens to all of our 
great industries this tremendous load ? Crime ! 
We have to pay the board of every man and 
woman who, by intemperance, is cast into the 
alms-house. We have to support the orphans 
of those who plunge themselves into their 
graves by beastly indulgences. We support 
from our pockets the large machinery of muni- 
cipal government, which is vast just in propor- 
tion as the criminal proclivities of the city are 
great. What makes necessary hospitals, houses 
of refuge, police-stations, and alms-houses, the 
Tombs, Sing Sing, and Moyamensing ? 

In that good time coming there shall be no 
exhaustive taxation ; no orphans homeless, for 
parents will be able to leave their children a 



28o 



The Abominations. 



competency ; no prisons, for crime will have 
given place to virtue. Then the vast swindles 
which now, from time to time, disgrace our 
cities, will be unheard of. No voting of public 
money that, on its way to some city improve- 
ment, falls into the pockets of those who voted 
it. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast 
expense to the people. No empanelling of ju- 
ries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slan- 
der, and black-mail. In that day of redemption 
there will be better factories, grander architec- 
ture, finer equipages, larger estates, richer opu- 
lence. 

Again : when our cities are purified the 
churches will be multiplied, purified, and 
strengthened. Now, denominations, and the 
individuals of the different sects, are often jeal- 
ous of each other. Christians are not always 
kindly disposed toward each other ; and minis- 
ters of the gospel sometimes forget the bond of 
brotherhood. In that day they will be sympa- 
thetic and helpful. There may be differences 
of opinion and sentiment, but no acerbity, no 
hypercriticism, and no exclusiveness. In that 
day all the churches will be filled with worship- 









A Good Time Coming. 281 

pers. We have not to-day, in the cities, church- 
room for one-fourth of our population ; and yet 
there is a great deal more room than the people 
occupy. The churches do not average an at- 
tendance of five hundred people. The vast ma- 
jority do not attend public worship. But in 
the day of which I speak there will be enough 
church-room to hold all the people, and the 
room will be occupied. In that time what rous- 
ing songs will be sung ! What earnest sermons 
will be preached ! What fervent prayers will 
be offered ! In these days a fashionable church 
is a place where, after a careful toilet, a few 
people come in, sit down, and what time they 
can get their minds off their stores, or away 
from the new style of hat in the seat before 
them, listen in silence to the minister — war- 
ranted to hit no man's sins — and to the choir, 
who are agreed to sing tunes that nobody 
knows ; and, having passed away an hour in 
dreamy lounging, go home refreshed. 

I pronounce much of what is called " church 
music," in our day, a mockery and a farce. 
Though I have neither a cultured voice nor a 
cultured ear, no man shall do my singing. 



282 The Abominations. 

When the storms, and the trees, and the dragons 
are called on to praise the Lord, I feel that I 
must sing, for I know more about music than do 
the dragons. Nothing can take the place of 
artistic music. The dollar that I pay to hear 
Parepa or Nilsson sing is far from being wasted. 
But, when the hymn is read, and the angels of 
God stoop from their thrones to bear up on their 
wings the praise of the great congregation, let us 
not drive them away with our indifference. I 
have preached in churches where fabulous sums 
of money were paid to performers, and the har- 
mony was exquisite as any harmony that ever 
went up from an Academy of Music ; and yet, 
for all the purposes of devotion, I would prefer 
the hearty, out-breaking song of a backwoods 
Methodist camp-meeting. When these fancy 
starveling songs get up to the gate of heaven, 
how do you suppose they look, standing be- 
side the great doxologies of the glorified ? Let 
an operatic performance, floating upward, get 
many hours the start, and it shall be caught 
and passed by the shout of the Sailors' Bethel, 
or the hosanna of the Sabbath-school children. 
I know a church where there was no singing 



\ 



A Good Time Coming. 283 

except that done by the choir, save one old 
Christian man ; and they waited upon him by 
a committee, and asked him if he would not 
stop singing, for he disturbed the choir ! 

The day cometh when all the churches will 
rejoice in this department of service, rightly 
conducted, and when from all the great audi- 
ences of attentive worshippers will rise a multi- 
tudinous anthem. 

"O God! let all the people praise thee!" 
Again : when the city is redeemed, the low 
haunts of vice and pollution will be extinguish- 
ed. Mr. Etzler, of England, proposes, by the 
forces of tide, and wind, and wave, and sun- 
shine, to reconstruct the world. In a book of 
much genius, which rushed rapidly from edition 
to edition, he says: — "Fellow-men: I promised 
to show the means of creating a paradise within 
ten years, where everything desirable for human 
life may be had by every man in superabun- 
dance, without labor and without pay ; where 
the whole face of nature shall be changed into 
the most beautiful forms, and man may live 
in the most magnificent palaces, in all imagin- 
able refinements of luxury, and in the most de- 



284 



The Abominations. 



lightful gardens ; where he may accomplish 
without labor, in one year, more than hitherto 
could be done in thousands of years ; may level 
continents ; sink valleys ; create lakes ; drain 
lakes and. swamps, and intersect the land every- 
where with beautiful canals and roads for 
transporting heavy loads of many thousand 
tons, and for travelling a thousand miles in 
twenty-four hours ; may cover the ocean with 
floating islands, movable in any desired direc- 
tion, with an immense power and celerity, in 
perfect security, and with all the comforts and 
luxuries ; bearing gardens and palaces, with 
thousands of families, and provided with rivu- 
lets of sweet water ; may explore the interior 
of the globe, and travel from pole to pole in 
a fortnight ; provide himself with means yet 
unheard of for increasing his knowledge of the 
world, and so his intelligence ; leading a life of 
continual happiness, of enjoyment yet un- 
known ; free himself from almost all the evils 
that afflict mankind except death, and even 
put death far beyond the common period of 
human life, and, finally, render it less afflict- 
ing. From the houses to be built will be 



A Good Time Coming. 285 

afforded the most enrapturing views to be 
fancied ; from the galleries, from the roof, and 
from its turrets may be seen gardens, as far as 
the eye can see, full of fruits and flowers, 
arranged in the most beautiful order, with 
walks, colonnades, aqueducts, canals, ponds, 
plains, amphitheatres, terraces, fountains, sculp- 
tured works, pavilions, gondolas, places for 
public amusement, to delight the eye and fancy. 
All this to be done by urging the water, the 
wind, and the sunshine to their full develop- 
ment." Mr. Etzler gives plates of the machi- 
nery by which all this is to be done. He pro- 
poses the organization of a company ; and says 
small shares of twenty dollars will be sufficient 
— in all from two hundred thousand to three 
hundred thousand dollars — to create the first 
establishment for a whole community, of from 
three to four thousand individuals. "At the 
end of five years we shall have a principal of 
two hundred millions of dollars ; and so paradise 
will be wholly regained at the end of the tenth 
year." 

There is more reason in this than in many of 
the plans proposed ; but mechanical forces can 



286 The Abominations. 

never recreate the world. . I shall take no shares 
in the large company that is proposed ; my 
faith is that Christianity will yet make the worst 
street of our cities better than the best street 
now is. 

Archimedes consumed the enemies of Syra- 
cuse by a great sun-glass. As the ships came 
up the harbor, the sun's rays were concentrated 
upon them : now the sails are wings of fire ; 
the masts fall, and the vessels sink. So, by the 
great sun-glass of the Gospel, the rays of 
heaven will be concentred upon all the filth 
and unchastity and crime of our great towns, 
and under the heat they will blaze and expire. 
When the day comes that I have shown will 
come, suppose you that there will be any 
midnight brawls ? any shivering mendicants, 
kicked off from the marble steps ? any droves 
of unwashed, uncombed, unfed children ? any 
blasphemers in the street ? any staggering past 
of inebriates ? No ! No wine-cellars. No 
lager-beer saloons. No distilleries where they 
make the XXX. No bloated cheeks. No 
blood-shot eyes. No fist-battered foreheads. 
The grandchildren of that woman who now 






A Good Time Coming. 287 

walks up the street with a curse, as the boys 
stone her, will be philanthropists, and heal the 
sick, and manage great commercial enterprises. 
When our cities are so raised, we shall have 
a different style of municipal government. The 
great question, in regard to the execution of the 
law, now is: " What is popular?" Our city 
governments slumber — great carcasses of insuffi- 
ciency, sending up their stench into the nostrils 
of high heaven, while there are thousands of 
gambling-houses, and drinking-saloons, and 
more places of damnable lust than the decency 
of the country has time to count. Do you tell 
me that the authorities do not know it ? They 
do know it. All the police know it. The 
sheriff and his deputies know it. The aldermen 
know it. The mayors know it. Everybody 
who keeps his eyes and ears open knows it. In 
the name of God I impeach the municipal 
authorities of many of our cities, that they neg- 
lect to execute the law. You cannot charge it 
upon any one party. Within the past few years 
both parties, and all kinds of parties, have been 
in power ; but the work has never been done. 
You have but to pass the City Hall, or look in 



288 The Abominations. 

upon the rooms of some of our city officials, to 
see to what sort of men our cities have been 
abandoned. Look at the swearing, bloated, 
sensual wretches who stand on the outside of 
the New York City Hall, picking their teeth, 
waiting for some crumbs of emolument to fall at 
their feet ; and then tell me how far it is from 
New York to Sodom. Who are those wretched 
women sent up in the city van to the police- 
court, apprehended for drunkenness ? They 
will be locked up in jail ; but what will be done 
with the groggeries that made them drunk ? 
Who are these men in the city-prison ? That 
man stole a pair of shoes ; that boy, one dollar 
from the counter ; that girl snatched a purse — 
all villanies of less than twenty or thirty dollars' 
damage to the community ; but for that gam- 
bler, who last night took that young man's 
thousand dollars — nothing ! For that man who 
broke in upon the purity of a Christian house- 
hold, and by a perfidy and adroitness that beat 
the strategy of hell, flung that girl into the 
chasm of earthly despair, from which her lost 
soul goes shrieking to the bottomless pit — 
nothing ! For those who "fleeced" a young 



A Good Time Coming. 289 

man, and induced him to filch from his employ- 
ers vast sums of money, until, in his agony, he 
came to an officer of the church, and frantically 
asked what he should do — nothing ! 

Verily, small crimes ought to be punished ; 
but it were more just if our authorities would 
turn out from our jails and penitentiaries the 
small villains, the petty criminals, the infantile 
offenders, the ten-dollar desperadoes, and fill 
their places with some of these monsters of 
abomination, who drive their roan span through 
our fine streets until honest men have to fly to 
escape being run over ; and if they would turn 
out from their incarceration the poor girls of 
the town, and put in some of the magnificent 
ladies who cover up the sidewalk with their 
unpaid-for fineries, and with scornful look, in 
the church-aisle, pass the daughters of pov- 
erty, who with their faded dress and plain 
hat dare to come to worship God in the same 
sanctuary. 

But all these wrongs shall be righted. Our 
streets shall hear the tramp of a regenerated 
multitude. Three hundred and sixty bells were 
rung in Moscow when the prince was married ; 



290 The Abominations. 

but when righteousness and peace shall " kiss 
each other " in all the earth, ten thousand 
bells will strike the jubilee. Poverty enriched. 
Hunger fed. Disease cured. Crime purified. 
The cities saved. 



THE END. 



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